


all that we were was tragic

by Likedeadends



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Inspired by The Song of Achilles, M/M, if you know how the song of achilles ends, jaehyun as patroclus, johnny as achilles, modernish retelling, then you know what the MCD is for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:22:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27425650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likedeadends/pseuds/Likedeadends
Summary: When Johnny was born his mother insisted on having his palm’s read. The seer took one soft pink hand within her own, traced the delicate skin, then sighed in a whisper of mourning: “Pity.”When Jaehyun was born no one considered his future at all.
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 31
Kudos: 102





	1. The beginning

**Author's Note:**

> please hear me when i say this is a patrochilles inspired story that is a retelling of a retelling (song of achilles). if you know how that story ends and it upsets you then please proceed with caution!! i have been working really hard to build this story into a worthy parallel and i hope you enjoy!!

When Johnny was born his mother insisted on having his palm’s read. The seer took one soft pink hand within her own, traced the delicate skin, then sighed in a whisper of mourning: “Pity.” 

His mother cried for weeks. She kept calling in psychics and seers and priests. She gave Johnny’s palm to anyone that was willing to take a look. By the time he was three, half the country knew his life would be brief but impactful; a cursed prince.

\-- 

Jaehyun’s birth was of no consequence. His mother hid the pregnancy and, once he was born, she left. His father was not prepared for a son. As such, he did very little to parent. 

When Jaehyun was three, he was lucky to be alive at all.

\-- 

Johnny grows up sheltered. His mother refuses to listen to people whispering in her ear telling her she can’t change fate. She keeps Johnny close. They visit temples every day, pray to any gods that they think will listen.

When she asks for Johnny’s hand, it’s never to hold in comfort as a mother does for her child, but for her to scrutinize the lines, check the one that runs vertical down the center— see if fate has changed. Fate is stubborn. She does not change.

Johnny‘s first word is “please.” He can draw the lines of his hand from memory before he turns eight.

\--

Jaehyun’s first word gets lost in a stream of babbling. His father doesn’t pay enough attention to catch it. He’s thankful Jaehyun isn’t a hard baby, rarely cries, rarely fusses. He’s able to hire a young woman to help for a decent price. She says it’s almost like not working.

When Jaehyun is old enough to enter school, he’s still an easy child. He’s curious and asks questions, but he’s never any trouble. He likes to read. He’s particularly fond of stories about magic, about dragons, about princes, about love. He is drawn to anything grander than the schoolyard and the small room he goes home to every day.

\--  
Johnny is not an easy child. 

Keeping him close is like caging a mountain lion. He sneaks out a lot once he realizes the guards won’t touch him— they beg and plead and barter but the only thing Johnny wants is freedom and they can’t offer that. He’s usually free for a couple hours before his father comes to retrieve him, the only person who isn’t afraid to be firm with him. Johnny doesn’t make it difficult, he always goes to the same parts of the forest and plays by himself. It’s the only piece of childhood he’s afforded.

He likes to pretend to be anything else: a lone knight on a quest to protect the kingdom, a warlock hunting for rare herbs, a prince destined to live a long life. He talks to the gods when he plays. Aphrodite and Apollo and Athena. They haven’t been seen on earth in years. Johnny clings to their legends as he’s learned to from his mother. 

He fights shrubs with a makeshift tree branch sword— thinks of Ares. He tends to a small garden of wild berries— thinks of Demeter. He reads of other countries, other lives— thinks of Hermes. He doesn’t feel cursed when he’s in the forest. He feels like a champion.

\--

When Jaehyun turns ten his father insists he learns how to fight. 

“You’ll join the army when you’re of age. The same way I did. The same way my father did before me, and his father did before him.” 

Jaehyun doesn’t want to join the army. He doesn’t want to be a killer. His protests are always met with threats to leave him on the street. Jaehyun’s family is rather well-off, so he is often lectured on honor and respect for the country, respect for their name. 

Jaehyun learns how to fight. Hand to hand combat first, then with weapons. He resigns himself to being sent to military school when he’s old enough. But he runs into the woods whenever his father stops paying attention to him, if only for a few hours of reprieve from the constant badgering.

\--

They meet like that— two outcasts looking for a home. 

Jaehyun wanders further into the brush than usual, spurred on by an especially sweet spring afternoon. He hears someone seemingly laboring away: grunting and shouting and puffing breaths.

He sneaks towards the sounds, crouched low in the sawgrass for covering. When he gets to the edge of a clearing he sees where the noise is coming from. There’s a young boy swinging the dead branch of a tree awkwardly in a cheap imitation of the training exercises Jaehyun knows too well. The boy’s form is all off. He doesn’t look dangerous, though he might have a couple more inches of height on Jaehyun.

“You’re holding that all wrong,” Jaehyun calls, standing from the grass and stepping into the clearing. It’s the loudest he’s ever heard himself. 

The boy, whose back was originally turned, jumps in surprise and whirls around to face Jaehyun. 

Jaehyun swears time stops for a moment. The boy’s hair is shining soft in the sunlight that filters through the treetops, long enough to curl delicately around his ears and the bottom of his neck. His lips part in a surprised little ‘O’ the color of rose buds. His eyes are wide but warm, shimmering too.

Jaehyun thinks he might be too caught up in looking and shakes himself from the stupor. 

“Who are you?” The boy demands, brandishing the tree branch in front of him. 

“Chulwoo’s son. Of the Jungs.” Jaehyun introduces himself as he’s always been taught-- his father’s son first.

“And your name?” The tree branch comes a little closer as the boy asks. 

“Jaehyun.” He grins, reaching tentatively to wrap a hand around the branch and lower it just a little. It’s meant to be a sign that he means no harm. “Who are you?” 

A specter? A god? A friend? 

“You can call me Johnny.”

“What exactly are you doing out here, Johnny?” Jaehyun asks, narrowing his eyes in faux suspicion. He has no reason to be scared of a kid with a tree branch. The woods aren’t known to be unsafe anymore. Thieves have more luck in the cities.

“I could ask you the same thing.” Johnny counters. Confidence seems to radiate off him, even as he holds the branch between them. His shoulders are not tense. He doesn’t see Jaehyun as dangerous, either.

“I’m just exploring. I like it out here. I made a fort a few weeks ago and I haven’t been able to find it since.” There’s no reason for Jaehyun to lie. His fort was really cool, actually, and maybe this boy knew where it was.

Johnny holds Jaehyun in a calculating gaze. “I’m teaching myself how to fight.” He eventually offers in return.

Jaehyun doesn’t mean to, but he laughs. “Is that how you plan on fighting?” He looks pointedly at how incorrect Johnny’s hold is on the hilt of his ‘sword’. “You’ll be in for a rude awakening.” 

Johnny’s cheeks go dark red and he drops the branch. It’s the slightest waiver in the confidence of his aura, even though overall he still looks shrouded in gold.

“How would you know? You’ve got to be younger than me.” Everything about him is defensive, arms coming to cross over his chest as he stares down at Jaehyun. 

“I don’t think age has anything to do with it.” Jaehyun bristles. 

“Regardless, how old are you? Eight? Nine?” Johnny’s cheeks are slowly returning to their original color. He looks rather pleased with himself for finding Jaehyun’s sore spot. 

“I’m ten!” Jaehyun hisses, kicking at the dirt between them in a great show of maturity.

“Then I’m two years your senior. Show some respect.” Johnny looks increasingly more smug. Jaehyun’s hands ball to tight fists and he thinks about hitting Johnny, maybe knocking him down a peg. His aura is so naturally self-assured, Jaehyun wonders if he’s ever been challenged before.

“Beat me in a fight and maybe I’ll respect you.” Jaehyun postures as he says it.

That’s how they find themselves laying in the dirt hours later, both drenched in sweat, caked in grass and dust, panting. 

Johnny looks up at the sky slowly bleeding orange and laughs. “Let’s call it a draw.”

He only managed to hold his own because he is bigger than Jaehyun. They fought with their hands and Johnny didn’t really know what to do; his mother never let him fight. Jaehyun knew what to do but lacked the force to follow through completely.They devolved to uncoordinated wrestling and lame insults and the most fun either of them had ever had before. 

Jaehyun is equal parts exhausted and thrilled, so he concedes. “A draw.” 

Johnny turns his head to look at the younger. It’s just breathing and cicadas for a moment. “You’ll teach me what you know.” Johnny says, rather than asks. 

Jaehyun turns to look at him, frowning. “Why don’t you just go to your own lessons? I’m sure sparring with me won’t keep you on pace with others.” It’s as honest as he’ll be. They aren’t equally matched. Jaehyun is small and his moves are still rather awkward. Johnny should go against someone older, someone bigger. 

“I don’t have lessons to attend. My mother doesn’t want me to fight. She doesn’t want me to go to war.” 

Jaehyun scoffs, sits himself up and looks at Johnny a little harder. “That’s ridiculous. When the war comes, the king will have us all on the front lines.”

Jaehyun says ‘when,’ because the war is inevitable. Their country, Vislia, is small with the sea to the left and one neighbor to the right: Rosvo. The threat of war is ever present. They have been in constant tension with each other for decades. Every year there are conferences, new peace treaties drafted, and hands shaken. Every year it seems to fall to pieces less than a month after the fact. 

Jaehyun doesn’t concern himself with politics. He’s too young to care. Joining the military is six years in the future. He just knows he’ll see war in his lifetime, unlike his father, and his father’s father, and so on. The new government of Rosvo rejected the invitation for a conference this year, or so Jaehyun overheard his father saying. 

Johnny should learn to fight.

Jaehyun decides he will teach him. 

“Will you be here again?” Jaehyun asks in the face of Johnny’s continued silence. 

“Here? Yeah. I sn— I come out here at least every weekend.” 

Jaehyun hums. “Okay. Then I’ll teach you. It’s not nice of your mother to leave you unprepared.” Jaehyun wonders if his own mother would have done the same, tried to keep him from war by leaving him completely defenseless. 

“Okay, then I’ll see you here next week?” Johnny finally sits up himself, brushing the dirt from his palms and pushing his hair from his face.

“Sure, if I can get my chores done in time. If not, we’ll just try the week after!” Jaehyun has never had to make plans before, he’s never had to worry about someone waiting for him. 

Johnny smiles like he understands. 

“Alright, Jaehyun. I’ll see you then.”

\--

Johnny’s mother is unrelenting with questions after he comes back from the forest looking dirtier than she’d ever seen before. 

“How many times have I told you to stop running away?” Her voice is level but her face is red. 

Johnny shrugs. “As many times as I’ve done it.”

“I’m trying to protect you.” She says, eyes pleading. Johnny just shrugs again. He loves his mother, he just can’t see himself being attached to a life that’s simply sitting inside the castle and praying to wake up every day. 

“I’m going to die either way.” He says simply. He’s twelve, not stupid. He thinks he might have a better relationship with death than most, having been acquainted with his mortality from a young age. Being cautioned constantly, looking at the fate line and the life line on his palm and knowing they say something tragic.

He thinks about fate and the war. He thinks about Jaehyun. Ten years old and ready for the military. He remembers learning that when kids are young they are supposed to feel invincible— is this what that’s meant for? Does Jaehyun believe in fate? Does he know when he’s going to die?

\--

Jaehyun’s father doesn’t notice his absence and doesn’t acknowledge his mess when he comes home. 

He cleans up then goes to his room then thinks about Johnny. There was something resplendent about him. Jaehyun wonders where Johnny lives and whose son he is.

\--

Jaehyun goes back in the forest the way he came, tries to convince himself Johnny wasn’t just some figment of his imagination. He’s there again, standing tall and proud in the clearing. He gifts Jaehyun a wide grin when he sees him coming.

“What’s this?” Jaehyun asks, looking at what Johnny’s brought with him. The closer he gets the more it looks like the handles of two broomsticks. 

Johnny’s grin gets wider. “I thought these would work better than tree branches.” 

He hands one to Jaehyun. They get started and Jaehyun compliments Johnny’s resourcefulness.

The day passes quickly between them. Jaehyun makes Johnny go through exercises with him and they eventually start sparring once he feels confident Johnny won’t unintentionally hurt him. 

It’s all fun until Johnny misses a block and Jaehyun actually hits his left side.

Johnny goes down quick and mostly silent. Just a small grunt when he’s on the ground and then he frowns, curling his hand in towards himself. 

“Oh my god, I’m sorry!” Jaehyun says, dropping his broomstick and quickly moving to crouch beside Johnny in the dirt. It looks like Johnny caught himself on his hands. His right palm is the one he’s holding close, it’s dirty and there’s a shock of crimson in the middle. 

“Did you cut yourself?” Jaehyun reaches for Johnny, as if his touch could do anything to help.

“Yeah, there was a rock.” Johnny says, scrutinizing his palm. Jaehyun looks too. The cut isn’t deep, but it’s bleeding. He internally scolds himself for not thinking to bring some sort of first aid supplies. 

“Do you want to come to my house to clean it?” He thinks his father wouldn’t really care. Maybe Johnny could even stay the night. 

Johnny looks a whole lot more put off by that idea than he did about getting hit with the broom handle. His eyes go wide and he shakes his hand. “No, I can’t do that. My mom would kill me.”

Then he looks at his hand again. Jaehyun wonders what their relationship is, Johnny and his mom. It seems like she’s more than a little protective. No military training, no sleepovers. Johnny seems like such a regular kid outside of that.

“Is she going to be mad you cut yourself?” He asks gently. 

Johnny’s lips twitch. “No, I think she’ll actually be pretty happy.”

Jaehyun thinks Johnny’s a little weird after that. They stop practicing for the day because Johnny can’t hold the wood with the cut on his hand. They find a little river and both clean up. They make silly jokes and promise to meet again next week only after Jaehyun apologizes a few more times for hurting Johnny. 

“Don’t worry about it. If I’m gonna be a warrior, I’m sure I’m going to get hurt sometimes.” 

Jaehyun frowns but can’t fight the logic.

\--

Johnny’s mother is furious when she sees his hand. “What were you even doing out there? Last week you came home filthy and this week injured!” 

She cleans the remaining dirt and dried blood from Johnny’s hands gently, though her tongue is sharp the whole time. She cuts off once the wound is bare to see: red and angry and cutting straight through the line of fate on Johnny’s palm. 

“You’re not leaving again.” 

There’s no room for argument.

The queen sticks to her word. 

Johnny does not get to leave the castle that weekend. She brings him with her to tea, walks in the gardens, and the temples. She makes him give offerings and pray. Johnny’s days are gone in a flash, with his forehead pressed to the floor.

He’s not praying for himself at Athena’s feet. His mind pictures Jaehyun. 

Johnny knows what soldiers look like. His father used to take him to the swearing in ceremonies. He watched countless men pledge their lives to the country, steely eyed and solemn. He can’t picture Jaehyun like that. They might have only met twice, but Jaehyun had warmth beneath him. He hesitated when he went to strike, not like the men Johnny used to watch spar. 

He prays for Jaehyun’s safety and that the war can wait.

He prays to Apollo while thinking of Jaehyun, too. Only this time simply the chance to see him again. Johnny hadn’t met someone his own age since he was a toddler. His mother did not trust easily and Johnny paid the price for it.

He’s afforded one more chance to leave the castle, two weeks later, when his mother falls ill and everyone is consumed with her healing. 

Johnny leaves without a second thought. He’s seen his mother’s palms, if those lines were to be believed then this illness wouldn’t kill her.

He’s surprised to find Jaehyun in the clearing. 

“You came back!” He shouts, eagerly crossing the remaining distance to get to his friend. Jaehyun looks equally surprised, smiling hard enough that Johnny sees dimples peaking out. 

“/You/ came back!” Jaehyun shouts back.

“Of course I did! You’re going to train me to lead an army.” Johnny teases, close enough now that he can reach out and tussle Jaehyun’s hair. 

“You’re so stupid.” The younger responds, ducking away from Johnny’s hand. “Where have you been? I thought you were mad at me.”

It’s a glimpse at the version of Jaehyun that Johnny can’t picture at war. Ten years old, earnest. “No, I wasn’t mad. My mom was though. She doesn’t like me getting hurt.” 

His hand is mostly healed now, though the cut was deep enough to leave a decent scar. Johnny wondered if that was a sign. His palm didn’t look the way it used to. 

“Well, I’m sorry if you got yelled at. My dad doesn’t really care what I do. Honestly, he might’ve been proud I managed to take you out.” Jaehyun tacks on a devilish grin. Johnny can’t help but laugh.

“It’s never going to happen again, so cherish the memory.” Johnny decides then and there that he might not be the most skilled, but he’ll be good enough to remind Jaehyun he’s not indestructible. 

Determination does Johnny well. They fight again because it’s what they’re used to and Jaehyun doesn’t get a leg up on Johnny once.

Johnny knows he shouldn’t feel overly confident about this. He’s fighting a ten year old and they’re using broomsticks. But he feels a little powerful every time he anticipates Jaehyun’s next move and manages to divert the attack and come back with a better one.

It feels natural. 

Neither of them hit the ground when they’re fighting. 

They both do when they hear the shouting. 

“JOHN JUN SEO. WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”

Jaehyun feels his heart plummet out of his chest. That voice is powerful and angry. Johnny’s never really mentioned his father but Jaehyun knows the sound of a disappointed parent when he hears one. 

A man walks into the clearing, tall and dignified. He’s dressed well. His face is a little red. He feels golden, too. Definitely related to Johnny in some way. Johnny only spares a sorrowful look to Jaehyun before he’s walking towards the man. 

“We were just playing!” He says, sounding desperate in a way Jaehyun has never heard before. 

“That didn’t look like just playing.” The man’s voice is so full of authority, Jaehyun bows his head in response.

“Dad... I—“ 

“I don’t want to hear it. If your mother ever found out—“ 

“But she wouldn’t! You’re always the one who comes to get me! Besides, why are you upset about this? If I’m going to be king one day I should be trained like one.”

Jaehyun’s ears perk. King? Maybe Johnny’s dad is nicer than he thought. Maybe they play pretend together.

“And what is that boy going to teach you about being king?” 

“We’ve just been sparring. He’s helping me.” Johnny's voice is soft and pleading.

“Helping you.” Johnny’s father scoffs. “Right, well let’s see then.” 

Jaehyun chances a look up because the man is definitely coming closer, he can hear the footsteps, much louder than Johnny’s. He stops right in front of Jaehyun and hands him back the broomstick. The other he gives to Johnny. It doesn’t feel fun anymore.

“Show me how much he’s taught you.” Johnny’s father says, stepping out from between them and gesturing for them to continue. Jaehyun’s hands are sweating and he’s got a clumsy grip on the pole. Johnny looks equally as uncomfortable. 

“Dad—“ 

“I said show me.”

There is no room for arguing. 

Jaehyun’s heart is pounding in his chest. Usually when they fight he feels like he could be a warrior. Now, in front of Johnny’s father, he feels ten and awkward and like he wants to go home. 

He can’t though.

They fight. 

It’s a little more clumsy than usual, because they’re both nervous. Johnny’s father doesn’t say anything. He watches, moves out of the way when he needs to, and stays silent. 

It doesn’t last long. Jaehyun is too distracted and Johnny finds an opening and doesn’t hesitate to take it.

Jaehyun is on the ground staring up at his friend and scared to move. Johnny’s father is the first to break the silence. 

“He’ll do, I suppose. You’re not meeting out here anymore, though.” He’s talking to Johnny but offers a hand to help Jaehyun up. 

“Who’s your father?” His gaze is sharp when he asks. His hand holds Jaehyun’s firmly.

“C-chulwoo.” Jaehyun stumbles out, as if it wasn’t one of the first words he learned. Johnny’s father nods. 

“Expect to hear from us soon. Johnny, say goodbye for now.”

\--

That night Jaehyun is called from his room because there are two soldiers from the king’s guard visiting. 

That night he discovers that Johnny is not just Johnny. He’s the king’s son. The only heir. The ill-fated prince.

“And when were you planning on telling me you’ve been off galivanting with the prince?” His father hisses after they’ve bid farewell to the soldiers. Jaehyun looks at the ground, cheeks hot, and frowning. 

“I didn’t know.” 

“Didn’t know? Didn’t he tell you whose son he was?”

That was the thing about Johnny, though; he hadn’t. He barely cared when Jaehyun said his father’s name and never offered his own. He was always Johnny.

He doubts his dad will believe that. 

“No, he just said his name was Johnny.” Jaehyun knows better than to raise his head when he’s being scolded.

His father lets out a heavy sigh but doesn’t come any closer. 

“Children these days... no respect for their families.” Jaehyun hears him cross the room and then drop into his favorite armchair. “Well, you’ve really done it now, haven’t you? Saddled yourself in with the prince.”

Jaehyun is more than a little confused by the response. All his life his father seemed preoccupied with social standing and meeting the right people. Jaehyun is friends with the /prince/ and his father is angry with him. It doesn’t make any sense to him.

“Suppose it’ll be good for you while it lasts.” Jaehyun chances a look up, his father is staring back. “If you step one toe out of line, I’ll disown you.” 

There it is. His father doesn’t think Jaehyun can uphold their name under royal scrutiny.

Jaehyun wishes grownups didn’t have to get involved with everything. It was all okay when it was just him and Johnny in the forest. 

“I won’t. Johnny is nice and so is he dad.” Jaehyun says carefully. 

“Do not refer to your king as someone else’s father.” The admonishing comes sharp enough that Jaehyun flinches.

“I’m sorry. I won’t. I’ll be perfectly behaved.” He nearly gets to his knees. Something about playing with Johnny was different, he doesn’t want to lose out on it.

“You better not.” His father says and it’s the end of the conversation.

\-- 

“You know I’ll have to tell your mother.” The king says as they’re having dinner together. Johnny frowns down at his plate. 

“Do you have to? She’s not going to like Jaehyun.” She doesn’t like anyone Johnny spends time with that isn’t family. She’s always worried any new stranger could be the difference between Johnny living and dying.

“She’d like him even less if she found out you were keeping him a secret.” 

Johnny hates when his dad is right. He supposes that is what being king is, though. Always being right, always knowing the coming and goings. One day Johnny will be the one spilling other people’s secrets.

“You’ll tell her, right?” Johnny isn’t scared of much but his mother’s wrath is quite unmatched. 

“Yes, yes. I’ll tell her.” The king says softly. His father never concerned himself with fate. He didn’t believe in the palm reading or the tarot. He didn’t go to the temples to pray. He believed in very few things: power, money, loyalty. He believed in what you could see. He allowed Johnny more freedoms knowing that one day Johnny would need to take the throne. 

Many people didn’t understand the dynamic Johnny had with his parents. The assumption was always that the queen loved him gently and the king loved him sternly, when it was actually quite the opposite. 

“And he’ll be here every weekend?” Johnny asks excited at the prospect of finally getting his way for once.

“If his father agrees.” 

Johnny keeps smiling. He somehow knows Jaehyun would come no matter what.

\--

When Jaehyun is escorted into the castle he’s terrified. The architecture is all vaulted ceilings and endless hallways, it’s vacuous. He feels like if he loses the guards he’s with he could get lost forever. He wishes his father would have at least come with him.

The guards are nice, but quiet. They don’t say much except for “right through here.” Jaehyun keeps his hands to himself and goes exactly where directed. 

He expects to wait by himself for a bit when he’s led into a study, however Johnny is there and waiting when he enters.

The guards stay outside. 

“Wow, you’re really here!” Johnny says like it was an impossibility. 

“I don’t think we’re allowed to say no to royalty.” Jaehyun snips. He’s still a little upset that Johnny kept a secret from him, if being the prince could even be considered a simple secret. 

“Jaehyun...” The apology is clear in Johnny’s voice and probably the closest Jaehyun will get. He doesn’t expect anything more, royals don’t bow to others. Regardless, he doesn’t get to find out what Johnny means to say next because another man enters the room.

He isn’t dressed like the guards. Jaehyun defers to Johnny to see how to react. Johnny looks enthused by the man’s entrance so Jaehyun decides not to be scared. 

“Uncle Minho!” Johnny runs up to the man, throws arms around his waist and hugs him. Jaehyun watches in awe.

Family looks different in the castle. 

The man, Minho, hugs Johnny back and then steps away to look Jaehyun over. He feels very young again beneath this man’s gaze. 

“This is your friend?” 

“Yeah, his name’s Jaehyun.” Johnny cuts in before Jaehyun can introduce himself properly. His mind flashes briefly to an image of his father being disappointed and he straightens his posture as a result. Minho doesn’t seem to mind, he grins and offers a hand. 

“Good to meet you, Jaehyun.”

Jaehyun can see Johnny in this man. Or maybe he can see Minho in Johnny. It’s in the way he must be some form of authority figure, but his smile is warm and genuine and he doesn’t project any expectations on Jaehyun. 

“You too, sir.” Jaehyun offers with a bow. He feels out of his element. He never even properly addressed the king in the clearing, now he’s worried about offending another high ranking official, no doubt. 

Minho just laughs. 

“No need for that. I’m Minho to you.” He says it easily. It must be nice to be royal and not live in your parent’s shadows, Jaehyun thinks with an uneasy smile of his own. “You’re the reason my nephew finally has permission to wield a sword. I should be thanking you.” Minho continues, looking completely sincere.

It’s jarring for Jaehyun. He’s used to adults speaking over him and to his father, never directly to him. He stutters through a thank you, subconsciously moving closer to Johnny for support. Minho, still unphased, stands at full height after a moment and then ushers them outside.

“Today we’ll start easy.” He says, leading them out into the castle gardens. Johnny and Minho are fast, Jaehyun lags behind. It’s equal parts the fault of his legs being shorter and his immediate infatuation with the beauty of the garden. It’s fragrant and vibrantly colored.

The flowers all dance in a gentle breeze. Jaehyun stops in front of a grouping of purple flowers, Minho’s voice fading into the distance. They are beautiful, if a little peculiar. The tops are folded down, making it look like they’re wearing a helmet. They’re white in the center, then bleed to a brilliant purple. Jaehyun reaches out to touch— 

“Jaehyun?” Johnny’s voice comes. Jaehyun jumps, withdrawing his hand and looking over at Johnny in a flurry of movement. “Hey, don’t touch those. Mom says they’re dangerous.”

Jaehyun looks again. They’re just flowers. How could they be dangerous? 

Johnny reaches and grabs Jaehyun’s hand, gentle and tugging him down the garden path. “C’mon, we have a lot to learn today. We can look at the flowers later.”

Jaehyun lets himself be led. He’s excited to learn from Minho. When the guards came to speak with his father they mentioned that Jaehyun would work with Johnny under the guidance of their most well-equipped fighter. At the time Jaehyun pictured someone a lot scarier than Minho.

When the day comes to an end and Johnny and Jaehyun are equally sweaty, out of breath, and exhausted, Jaehyun decides Minho is a bit scary. 

He coached them through drills with a kind voice, but did not let up on those drills no matter how much Jaehyun or Johnny begged for a break.

“You won’t have breaks on the battlefield,” he would say patiently, and then tell them to run another lap. They don’t even pick up swords that day. 

Even as they whine their way through it, whenever Johnny and Jaehyun meet eyes they’re grinning.

This is the beginning of something, they can both feel it. They’ll be the fiercest warriors the country has seen.

\--

They carry on like that for weeks leading up to winter. Always just the three of them; Johnny, Jaehyun, and Minho. There are no additional guards around, no spectators. Johnny told Jaehyun one day that was because of his mother.

“She doesn’t want anyone else to know what I’m capable of.” He said around a bite of apple. 

That stuck with Jaehyun for a while. He couldn’t figure out why the queen wouldn’t want people knowing their future king could defend them and himself if the need ever arises. Or when, in their case. 

As they trained, tensions with Rosvo were only getting worse. Jaehyun didn’t understand politics and Johnny didn’t ever talk about them. What he managed to glean from his father was there were issues with imports and trade deals and other things that were not interesting to someone his age.

It all sounded silly to Jaehyun so he just ignored it. He was going to join the army anyways. At least now he might be good enough to survive.

\--

They went on like that for two years. Jaehyun got a little taller, a little stronger. Johnny got a lot taller and stronger. They were twelve and fourteen, thick as thieves. 

Minho managed to pull strings and Jaehyun was able to spend the night with Johnny from time to time. That was the most fun for both of them. They played well into the early hours of the morning: hide and seek, knights and dragons, truth or dare. They explored the castle when it was later at night and they knew the queen wouldn’t find them.

They piled pillows and blankets on the ground and fell asleep telling each other wild stories. If it stormed, they leaned on each other for comfort. The next morning they would run to the kitchens together and help make biscuits for breakfast.

Sometimes Johnny would bring Jaehyun to the temples and they would pray together. Jaehyun didn’t really believe in the gods, but he prayed for Johnny just in case. 

The castle staff were rather fond of Jaehyun. He was refreshingly polite. They liked hearing Johnny laugh, too. As a result, both of them were doted on when no one was looking. They lived a good life. Good enough that Jaehyun didn’t mind going back to his house during the week.

His father still regarded him coldly. He would ask about Jaehyun’s time with Johnny even though he was really only interested to hear if Jaehyun had done something wrong. It seemed like his father was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

His room was slowly becoming an homage to his time with Johnny. He slowly accumulated toys and clothes Johnny passed off to him. There were dried flowers and other aborted art projects hanging around. And the letters, too.

Even though they spent Saturdays and most Sundays together, they wrote each other letters and exchanged them to make sure they could keep up with each other’s lives. 

Jaehyun felt like his letters were usually a little boring when he was writing them, just school and church and his father. Then he felt so interesting when Johnny would open the letter in front of him and devour the whole thing in minutes, smiling wide and enthused. 

Johnny’s letters were usually penned nicely on heavy card stock. Never less than two pages and always enclosed with the royal seal.

His uncle teased him about it. “It’s an interesting exercise, is all. You spend so much time together, do you really not tell him these things in person?” 

Sometimes Johnny didn’t want to say the things out loud that he wrote for Jaehyun.

Interspersed between his daily life he would write about his fears. On his fourteenth birthday, he didn’t celebrate the way most children did. He was invited into his father’s meeting and watched adults pour over battle strategies, should Rosvo attempt to wage war.

Johnny told Jaehyun about it. He told Jaehyun about learning the history of all the treaties signed between their countries, all the previous wars, the lineage of all the rulers. And then he clung to Jaehyun’s letters about learning algebra and washing his father’s socks. It was a good balance.

Minho stopped teasing him after that.

\--

Johnny is halfway to fifteen and Jaehyun to thirteen when Rosvo officially declares intentions of war. 

“You’re going away for awhile.” Johnny’s mother woke him in the middle of the night, holding out a bag to him. 

“Why?” Johnny, sleep addled and confused, could barely find his mother in the dark.

“It’s not safe for you here. Not now. I’ve arranged for you to stay with a good friend of mine. Minho will take you. Tonight. Now.” She throws clothes at Johnny. He’s absolutely bewildered but he dresses because it’s his mother asking and he can’t say no.

“What about Jaehyun?” He asks, slowly coming back to reality. It’s a Tuesday night and all Johnny can picture is Jaehyun in his room down in the city, none the wiser. 

“What about him?” His mother shoots back with a sneer. She never kept her dislike for him a secret.

“I can’t just leave him! He—“ Johnny bites his tongue. Better to reveal less. His mother levels him with a dark gaze and scoffs. 

“You can and you will just leave him. He is nothing of consequence. You’ve had your fun but now it’s time for me to keep /you/ safe.”

“But—“ 

“Enough!” She cuts him off. “I’ve stood by and let you play pretend for two years now. You will be king one day, Johnny. He will be nothing. You need to learn that distinction and quickly, before it kills you. Now put your shoes on.”

Johnny is gone with Minho before the sun rises and no one will tell him where they’re headed or why they’re going. He assumes it’s because of the war, he saw the soldiers coming in from the city.

Minho is asleep beside him, their driver silent ahead, and Johnny looks heavenward. He prays for Jaehyun.

\--

“The war will start soon.” Jaehyun’s father says to him in greeting the next morning. “I doubt you’ll see Johnny again.” 

Something in Jaehyun’s chest feels insurmountably heavy at that. His father is not the king, he does not have the authority to keep Johnny away. He sounds certain, though. 

The guards don’t come that weekend. 

Jaehyun waits well into the day for them. Even after his father leaves. Even after the postman comes by. He waits. When it passes into afternoon Jaehyun leaves the house and heads to the forest, to their clearing.

Johnny isn’t there. The birds are laughing and playing above him and it feels like a taunt. He’s got a letter in his hands and doesn’t know what to do with it. When the sun sets, hours later, it feels final. 

Johnny isn’t coming.

He doesn’t come the next week either. 

Or the week after that. 

Or the week after that. 

Jaehyun returns to his normal lessons, where the boys have gotten a lot meaner in his absence. Now they target him because they don’t know where he’s been. They’re humiliated when he can combat them. He’s still one of the youngest, so they don’t understand how he’s improved so much. 

“Heard you’re number one in your class.” His father says one night, looking very pleased. Jaehyun just nods, because he doesn’t feel much pride in it.

He’s been thinking more about the flowers in the garden and the chefs in the kitchens. His father doesn’t let him help with meals and would be enraged if Jaehyun asked about planting a garden. 

And, of course, he thinks about Johnny.

He tries to find the castle in the skyline and imagine what Johnny’s doing there. 

Jaehyun still writes his letters, though they read more like diary pages. He wishes on stars because he’s thirteen and still believes in that.

Then the unthinkable happens; Minho shows up. He’s dressed like a general and definitely out of place at Jaehyun’s front door. He’s polite to Jaehyun’s father and then requests to speak to him alone. Jaehyun is nervous in Minho’s gaze, and feels almost like a stranger again.

“I can’t stay long, but Johnny sent this for you. You need to read it and decide quickly what you’re going to do next.” He hands a letter over to Jaehyun, not the same weight of Johnny’s usual letters but addressed in the same scrawl.

“It’s a lot to ask someone so young, I know. But Johnny insisted. So, just do what you think is best.” 

Jaehyun doesn’t get to respond. He’s wrapped in Minho’s arms, a brief embrace, and then standing alone again. 

His father yells for him the minute Minho departs.

“What did he want?” He sounds disappointed. 

“Just to tell me our lessons are cancelled.” Jaehyun lies smoothly for the first time in his life. He can tell he needs to. His father is no more cold than usual after that and briskly leaves the house for the day.

Jaehyun pulls out the letter and basks in the first he’s heard from Johnny in over a month.

_Jaehyun,_

_Any other day I would write pages for you to explain what’s going on, but Minho is leaving soon and I don’t have time for that. What you need to know is this: my mother sent me away. She doesn’t want me there when the war starts. She didn’t want me to tell you, either.  
I’m in the mountains. There’s a small town up here. I’m staying with a man my mother trusts. I don’t know how long I’ll be here, I just know I’d rather not do it without you. Minho has agreed to arrange transport for you. As far as I know, it’ll be the same night you receive this letter. Bring only the essentials and go to the library. Minho has a lot of friends. He’s promised me you’ll arrive safely should you choose to come. _

_I understand if you want to decline. It might be selfish of me to ask, but could you send a letter oblong if you decide you don’t want to come? I don’t know when I’ll hear from you again otherwise._

_Best,  
Johnny (or, as I’m known here, Youngho)_

The decision is a simple one. Jaehyun never had much before he met Johnny and he only realized that in Johnny’s absence. Maybe it was a big choice for a thirteen year old to make— he doesn’t think much of it though. He starts packing a bag immediately after he finishes reading.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Jaehyun’s back straightens and he stops dead in place, just about to cross the threshold to the front door. It’s almost midnight on a Saturday-- he could’ve sworn he heard his father leave the house. 

“Where are you going? Don’t make me ask again, Jaehyun.” 

Jaehyun turns to look into the living room and there is his father, sitting at that table and staring straight back at him. The lights are out and all Jaehyun can really see is a shadow and a glimmer of his eyes catching moonlight that comes in through the window. Jaehyun can’t think of a single excuse, not with his suitcase in hand. 

“I’m going out.” He grits, trying to hide his bag behind his legs. It’s definitely a useless movement, there’s no way his father hadn’t seen it yet. Especially not when he hears that familiar scoff, disbelieving and harsh. 

“Running away more like.” The shadow of his father stands and starts advancing on him. “I don’t know exactly what that man came to tell you today, but I could only assume it was about the war.” He’s close enough now that Jaehyun can see the whites of his eyes, can see them turn to the suitcase at his feet. 

“No, he didn’t! He really was just telling me that--” 

“Don’t lie to me. You packed a bag. You’re planning to run away, just like those Lee boys did last week.” His father reaches out with a quick hand, grabs Jaehyun by the jaw in a firm grip. “Hear me clearly, Jaehyun. If you think you can run away from this war, you’re a fool. It will find you one way or another. And if you think you will besmirch the family name by trying to defect before it catches up to you…” He pauses, sneers. “You’ll have nothing to come back to.” 

It’s not like it’s the first time Jaehyun’s father threatened to disown him. It’s the first time it’s a real possibility, though. Jaehyun grew up a good child, no matter how much his father scolded him, it was always preemptive. Jaehyun wanted to make him proud. Jaehyun didn’t cause problems, didn’t question things even when they should have been, didn’t step out of line. 

Now, though, the door is more inviting than his father’s touch. 

“I’m not running from the war.” Jaehyun grits out, feeling brave. 

“Then what exactly do you suppose you’re doing? You don’t have any friends to visit. There’s no one in the family that would take you in.” His father drops his hand like he’s embarrassed to be touching him at all. 

“I have Johnny.” 

Another cold laugh. “Exactly. You have nothing.” 

Jaehyun withdraws further, a step closer to the door. His upbringing was never overly loving, his father never warm, but it was family. The only family he knew before Johnny. Looking at his father now, though, he thinks that he didn’t know family until Johnny. 

“And what will you have when I go? No one left to carry the family name you hold so dearly.” Jaehyun speaks even though the words feel like they’re coming from Johnny’s mouth. They used to talk at length about Jaehyun’s father and how his priorities were so backwards. 

It’s not a surprise when Jaehyun’s father lashes out, provoked for the first time since Jaehyun’s birth. He moves blindly, the back of his hand connects with Jaehyun’s cheek and his chest heaves. “Enough! Go back upstairs. I’m not wasting anymore time in a petty debate with you. You have nowhere to go and I won’t have you dragged back here tomorrow morning when the guards find you wandering aimlessly.” 

It’s the end of a slowly sinking ship. Jaehyun looks at the man in front of him and feels nothing. What was once resentment is replaced with acceptance, this man would not be love or family or home. He was the last barrier. 

Jaehyun picks up his suitcase. 

“You won’t have me back at all.” Then he runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's part one! I do want to say I write this story as a twitter thread and then cross post here afterwards! So, if you'd like to follow in the smaller pieces rather than wait for the whole you can find me @suhjpeg. I love these two so much. Please tell me you feel the same. 
> 
> And thank you for reading!!


	2. Growing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe home isn't a place.

It’s funny how quickly two people’s lives can meld into one. 

Jaehyun thinks about that the whole ride to Johnny. In his head he can see his life laid out in two separate timelines: before and after Johnny. Before, he couldn’t consider the way it felt to miss someone.

Of course, he was a child then and didn’t know much of anything about love and care and the lasting impact people who aren’t family can make. Now, _after_ , he knows that Johnny belongs in his life in some inexplicable way.

The journey is not short. It allows for a lot of introspection as the man Jaehyun is traveling with does not speak the same language.

Minho navigated the meeting between them, smoothly slipping between tongues and explaining to Jaehyun that for the time being his name would be Yoonoh and he had no father. That he would travel with this merchant to a small mountain town and then find the farmer’s market.

The merchant, whose name Jaehyun never quite caught, nodded as Minho explained the same thing to him. Minho wished Jaehyun good luck and then he was gone and Jaehyun was leaving the only place he’d ever known. 

That was two hours ago.

They switched from the main road to a less traveled one after the first hour. They bump along and Jaehyun wonders if his father would report him as a runaway. Either that or he would simply pretend Jaehyun never existed.

He wonders how quickly his father could rework his life to make it seem like Jaehyun was never in it. It couldn’t be easy, to pin your hopes on a child and then sabotage those hopes until there was nothing but an empty room left. He tried not to feel guilty about leaving. His father was young, he could have another son. 

Jaehyun thinks about Minho telling him he has no father anymore. The story, should anyone care enough to ask, is that he’s an orphan and the healer has agreed to take him in. 

That’s all he knows about where Johnny is; that he’s in the mountains and the man he’s with practices holistic medicine and they’re going to hide in plain sight. 

Jaehyun’s mind is truly boggled by the possibilities. Somewhere that Johnny isn’t a prince and Jaehyun isn’t Chulwoo’s son. He’s been invited specifically.

It feels so important and so brand new and his heart pounds with every bump in the road.

The merchant makes a gruff noise of acknowledgement when Jaehyun thanks him, hours later, standing in the farmer’s market. They’d driven through the night and arrived with the first rays of sunrise.

Jaehyun tries to offer to help the merchant set up his stall, but he moves away without saying anything further and there’s clearly no invitation to follow. Jaehyun stands there in the small lot slowly filling with vendors and feels alone for the first time. It’s as terrifying as it is freeing. He knows that Johnny is somewhere around here, has to be. But for this moment, he’s just Jaehyun and that could mean anything. 

He doesn’t know exactly where to go next. There are people milling around, chatting and setting up. Some people are purchasing already. Some kids are running around. Jaehyun doesn’t recognize anyone. He moves away from the center of the action, walks the perimeter of the small lot they’re in and searches for some sort of sign.

Maybe it’s in his head but he swears he can feel Johnny there, somewhere. 

He’s so distracted looking around at the people coming and going that he doesn’t notice a man come up behind him, not until there’s a hand on his shoulder. He jumps in surprise and turns. Lies are ready on his tongue and die quickly once Jaehyun is fully facing the stranger. 

He doesn’t look at Jaehyun like he’s in trouble. His eyes are sparkling in amusement though his lips don’t smile. If Johnny is golden, this man is iridescent.

“Come, Yoonoh. We’ve been waiting for you.” 

No preamble needed. He turns and Jaehyun follows. It’s like he’s said the secret code. Yoonoh. There’s no more Jaehyun here. Before and after Johnny. Two different lives.

They don’t go far. There’s a stall setup at the end of the row Jaehyun had been walking around. The man stops there and gestures for Jaehyun to enter. It’s the longest two steps of his life, but he enters and there is Johnny.

They smile at each other for a long time, long enough that Jaehyun’s cheeks hurt. And then Johnny breaks the silence. “You came.” 

“Of course I did.”

They were only apart for about a month, but Johnny changed in that month like he had over the years. His skin was tanner, hair longer, shoulders wider. And then something not quite tangible. He looked lighter. Jaehyun wonders if it’s the absence of his mother.

Jaehyun can’t imagine the strain it puts on you to be constantly reminded you’re going to die. 

He crosses the stall and hugs Johnny, tight as he can. He’s solid and warm in Jaehyun’s arms. 

“I really thought I wasn’t going to see you again.” Jaehyun murmurs, feeling brave.

Johnny hugs back and for a brief moment they’re in the garden together, just the two of them. “I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you or bring you with me but my mother didn’t give me a chance. She woke me up and sent me off all within an hour.” 

“That’s okay. I figured.”

Jaehyun isn’t actually sure that it’s okay. Then again, what does he know about good parenting? 

The man clears his throat and they’re back in this mountain town. They part, but stay close. 

“Happy to have you with us. I trust your trip was okay?”

Jaehyun flushes and nods. “It was. Thank you again for—“ 

The man waves him off. “I’m happy to do it. I’ve lived alone for a long time. Youngho is usually out all hours of the day, so I’m hoping you’ll make a decent apprentice.”

He doesn’t hold authority the same way Minho does. His words are all said gently, just a trace of music in them. There is something extraordinary about him regardless. Jaehyun will ask Johnny about it later, in private. For now though, he puzzles on the man’s words.

“Apprentice?”

“Of course!” He laughs and he’s not looking at Jaehyun and Johnny anymore. He’s busying himself transferring little bottles from crates and onto the stall’s counter. “I’m taking you in for the extra set of hands.” He’s so clearly joking; Jaehyun isn’t used to adults like this.

He only knows this man from the one passing sentence Minho offered. He’s a mystery and Jaehyun is excited to figure it out. 

Johnny’s at his side looking extremely supportive. He leans in and whispers “He has a huge garden. You’ll love it.” 

Jaehyun is doubly excited.

“I suppose I should introduce myself, being that I’m your guardian now.” The man stands and turns back to them. His shirt is long and loose and the fabric flurries around him with the movement. His smile is infectious.

“My name is Taemin. You are here with me because Youngho’s mother puts a great deal of respect in my readings.” He bows, lets Jaehyun bow in return and then he goes back to unpacking. It’s not impolite, he makes eye contact when he can. “I’ve read Youngho’s palms, and cards, and astrological chart so many times.”

Jaehyun’s brows furrow a bit. Perhaps he had wrongly assumed that here, so far from the city, they could ignore what they’ve never discussed; Johnny’s fate. Taemin continues, either unaware of Jaehyun’s confusion or simply undeterred.

“I’ll tell you both what I’ve seen, because Youngho insisted I not share until you arrived.” He’s methodical about his little bottles, each of them written on in elegant scrawl and placed just-so. 

“The future is not concrete. Fate lays many paths for us. Though one might be the most obvious, it is not definite. Fate cannot take away our autonomy. We still have freedom in our choices.” The crates are empty now. No one has come by their stall yet. 

Taemin looks at them again, eyes still sparkling.

“Youngho, you will either lead a grand life or a long one. The decision is up to you.” It feels private, to Jaehyun. He feels like he shouldn’t hear it, no matter how much he wants to. They’re just kids and in the years he’s known Johnny they’ve never talked about death.

Taemin says it like there is hope. 

Jaehyun wonders how often Johnny was put in this situation. He looks at Johnny and he is entirely unphased, expression serene like Taemin was simply predicting the weather. Jaehyun may be younger but he doesn’t think he will ever understand the lack of urgency. The acceptance.

Taemin gave a pause but Johnny didn't speak. 

“Anyways, that’s why your mother has sent you to me. She thinks I’ll be able to keep you safe from fate’s temptations.” He settles his eyes on Jaehyun— it’s a heavy look. He’s not just a healer, he’s a witch.

Jaehyun feels very exposed, even though no one’s ever looked at his palms or his chart or pulled a tarot card. Taemin is pausing again. This time Jaehyun is the one without an answer. 

Taemin goes back to smiling. “Now, introduce yourself to me and make it believable.”

The atmosphere changes in an instant. Jaehyun hadn’t realized he was holding his breath until his lungs expanded again. Instantly his mouth goes to form around the familiar shape of his father’s name until he remembers why he’s here in the first place.

He offers a hand to Taemin, smiles politely, and says: “My name is Yoonoh.” He might be the happiest orphan alive. Johnny claps a hand on Jaehyun’s shoulder and Taemin shakes his hand and everything seems to fall into place. 

“It’s good to have you here, Yoonoh. I’ll let Youngho take you back to my house for now. You’ve had a long trip and there’s nothing less entertaining than watching me barter with the townsfolk, I promise you that.” He winks at Jaehyun and then gives Johnny a little nod. “I’ll be back at my normal time.”

Johnny’s hand is still on Jaehyun’s shoulder and he nods. They say their goodbyes and depart from the stall. Johnny’s hand moves from Jaehyun’s shoulder to his wrist, just to help lead him through the crowd that has gotten much larger.

“It’s not too long of a walk, really. We usually only come to town once a week so don’t get too discouraged.” 

Jaehyun feels so many emotions at once: excited and confused and relieved. He doesn’t care about the walk. 

“J— Youngho... I—“

“We’ll talk at home, Yoonoh.” Johnny says, a gentle squeeze following. Jaehyun gives up easily. Home. Quite the weapon for Johnny to pull out. The early morning sun feels that much warmer as they walk.

Taemin’s home is beautiful. 

It’s about a twenty minute walk from the center of town, tucked away where the forest threatens to overtake the roadway entirely. It looks straight from a storybook: two floors, covered in vines and moss, flowers blooming wherever they liked. Jaehyun would almost think the house was a part of the forest itself if not for the light on in the window. 

It is lighter here. Closer to the heavens, safer. He hasn’t stopped smiling. Johnny hasn’t let go of his arm. 

“Here we are,” he says with a flourish of his free hand.

It’s more like home than the castle could ever be. There aren’t gates or guards. The front door is unlocked. Rather than saying stay out, it’s calling to come inside. 

Jaehyun obliges. “Wow, it’s so nice here.” 

The walls are lined with plants. The shelves have candles and crystals and vials of every shape and color. The house feels alive, thrumming with energy and pure magic. 

“Yeah, it is. I wasn’t kidding, you’ll love it here. Taemin’s really nice, too.” Johnny tugs Jaehyun into the kitchen.

It’s equally as cluttered and perfect.

“He seems really nice.” Jaehyun says offhandedly. He’s looking around in awe. This isn’t a weekend hidden away in Johnny’s chambers, this is _theirs_. 

“And he really is excited to have you here. I told him how much you love the garden at the castle.”

Jaehyun looks over when Johnny says that and Johnny is looking right back at him, probably has been the whole time. Jaehyun feels very seen again and Johnny looks pleased with himself. Jaehyun did love that garden. 

“Is he really a witch?” 

“Look around, Hyunnie.” Johnny gestures. He looks so much more comfortable here than he did in the city. “What do you think?” 

Jaehyun thinks the closest he ever got to magic before was finding Johnny in the clearing. He smiles. “I think I’m lucky Minho likes me enough to give me your letter.”

“I didn’t give him much choice.” Johnny’s cheeks go pink in a way that is very rare for Jaehyun to witness. Usually Johnny has no shame. “I think it was my very brief hunger strike that sealed the deal.” A smirk. “And how cute your dimples are.”

And he’s magic like that, too. Always able to humble himself and then switch the conversation on its head. 

Jaehyun sputters and smacks Johnny’s arm. But he can’t bring himself to say ‘maybe I shouldn’t have come,’ even as a joke. They laugh together and bask in the reunion.

No one needs to say they missed each other. 

Then Jaehyun settles and his smile droops a bit because he remembers what Taemin said in the stall. “Johnny?” 

Johnny raises an eyebrow. “Youngho.” He corrects softly, but motions for Jaehyun to continue.

“Is this what the rest of your life is going to look like?” Here in the mountains, safe from the queen and the impending war and responsibilities. Jaehyun isn’t sure if this is what Johnny always wanted. The letters they used to trade made it seem like Johnny would be perfectly happy to never be king, but desiring an ordinary life and actually having one were two very different things. 

Johnny understands the question and shrugs. “I’ve been meeting with Taemin and mother at least once a month since I was eight. All of those meetings were centered around Taemin trying to figure out what exactly would bring about my death. My mother wouldn’t rest without answers.” 

Jaehyun puzzles over the confession. Johnny did keep some secrets, then. He never mentioned these meetings before. 

“My mother is convinced it’s the war. She’s seen the way I fight with you. She’s seen the suggestions I’ve given my father over battle plans. She’s seen me interact with diplomats. She knows I would be a key player in war. And what is more glorious?”

What indeed? Johnny, the youngest member of the royal family, giving orders that could possibly end centuries old tensions? That’s the stuff of legends. 

“So, I’m here. She’s choosing my life over our people.” Johnny does not look pleased to say it.

Jaehyun, selfishly, is on the queen’s side with this choice. The adults can have their war. Johnny doesn’t need to be involved, no matter how petulant he seems to be over the decision.

“No offense,” Jaehyun starts carefully “but do you really think your involvement will be the difference between our country winning or losing?” This conversation is all land mines. Jaehyun wants to talk about anything else. 

“It’s my destiny, isn’t it?” Johnny isn’t looking at him anymore. They’re just kids. Destiny, fate... it’s nothing Jaehyun has solid opinions on. 

“It doesn’t have to be. Are you really so upset your mother doesn’t want you to die?” Jaehyun almost mentions his own mother, who wouldn’t care either way.

“I just worry that challenging fate will have worse consequences.” 

Jaehyun puts his hand on Johnny’s shoulder and squeezes, a mirror of the comfort Johnny gave him earlier. 

“Maybe this is what you’re meant to be doing right now. Taemin never told you how you’d die right?”

Johnny shakes his head. “Taemin likes to operate in non-answers because he hates being wrong.” Then he takes a deep breath and moves out from under Jaehyun’s hand. “Let’s stop talking about this. I want to give you the tour.”

Jaehyun thinks Johnny likes non-answers, too.

He has more questions that he’ll save for another day. For now, he’s excited to take in his new life. Johnny shows him the study and the dining room and upstairs where there is a bathroom and just two bedrooms: theirs and Taemin’s.

Johnny shows Jaehyun their room and looks proud of how tidy he’s kept it and all the space for Jaehyun’s things (even though they both know Jaehyun didn’t have much). The sunsets as Johnny shows him the backyard and everything is golden.

It’s still golden when Taemin pokes his head out the window in the kitchen and tells them he’s making dinner. It’s home and Johnny’s here and Jaehyun doesn’t worry about the war or being a soldier for the first time in a long time.

\--

They settle into a routine easily. 

The next morning Johnny explains that even though his mother forbade it, he was still training. Minho and Taemin shared a lot of friends, one of whom was a retired general from a foreign country. He fled to the mountains before he could be taken as a war criminal. He worked with Johnny every day.

“You can come with me if you want to, but you aren’t under any obligation now.” Johnny said over a shared bowl of fruit. 

Neither of them were surprised when Jaehyun declined. 

So, it happened that when Johnny would leave in the mornings, Jaehyun stayed behind.

The first day Jaehyun felt a little awkward. He wanted to impress Taemin so he did everything he could to be useful, starting with cleaning the dishes after breakfast. 

“Would you like to help me with my work?” Taemin asked from the dining table, finishing off his tea.

“Yeah, of course!” Jaehyun was elated. Johnny left the house to be a warrior and Jaehyun stayed behind to learn how to heal him. 

He and Taemin worked well together. Jaehyun was an intent listener and absorbed information like a sponge.

At first he only helped with maintaining the garden and learning the properties of each of the herbs there. Then he graduated to helping Taemin collect them and prepare them. While much of the work was rooted in science, now and then Taemin would do spells in front of Jaehyun.

Jaehyun loved watching Taemin do magic. The rituals were entrancing and he was effervescent when he worked. 

“How did you know you were a witch?” Jaehyun asked one day, after Taemin finished casting his weekly protections around the house.

“It’s simply how I was born, Yoonoh. The spirits have always walked with me. My mother told me I used to make sparks fly when I cried as a baby.” 

Jaehyun thinks about that well into the night. He lays awake with Johnny in the bed beside him, stares at him, and thinks.

What was it like to be born knowing exactly who you are? 

He wonders if he’s more fortunate to have limitless directions or at least no inclinations of his fate. Johnny is beautiful in his sleep and powerful when he wakes, but he’ll always be a royal no matter where they hide. He’ll always carry his destiny with him.

Taemin is mysterious and gorgeous and no matter what he will always have magic. 

Jaehyun has discovered he loves gardening. He loves reading. Taemin taught him some simple meditations and he loves doing that, too.

He doesn’t feel himself boiled down to a Jung anymore. He can feel himself becoming the accumulation of his interests and skills. What he covets, what makes him laugh. 

He looks at Johnny a little longer, his eyelids getting heavier.... what he loves.

— 

Johnny’s birthday is five days before Jaehyun’s. In the city, they never celebrated together, no matter how much Johnny would beg his parents. His father at least looked sorry to say no, but his mother was unyielding that a common boy’s birthday had no place for celebration in the castle.

The first year, Johnny waited until the next weekend Jaehyun came and they baked a small cake together at night under the watchful eye of their favorite chef. 

He snuck Jaehyun a gift. It was a thin gold necklace, the chain delicate and easy to slip under the collar of his shirt. Johnny made Minho take him to purchase. He looked so proud when Jaehyun slipped it on and wouldn’t listen when Jaehyun blushed and apologized profusely for not having a gift to give in return. What could he have given a prince? 

The year after that went the same way. A secret exchange late at night.

Jaehyun was prepared that time, though. He didn’t have precious gems or metals, but he had a painting on a canvas no bigger than the palm of his hand. It was their clearing, rendered in soft colors of a setting sun, like the day they met.

Jaehyun had to stay late with his art teacher for two weeks in order to get permission to make the painting and take it home. It was worth it when Johnny threw his arms around Jaehyun’s neck and thanked him for the rest of the night.

This year is different. 

Johnny wakes Jaehyun up on February 9th by sitting on his stomach and shaking his shoulders. Jaehyun blinks awake slowly, shaken from a lovely dream, and tries to muster a glare to throw in Johnny’s direction. 

“C’mon, Hyunnie. It’s our birthday.”

He pouts when he says it. Jaehyun is still bleary eyed but he knows what a Johnny pout sounds like at this point. He grumbles, disoriented, and can’t manage to correct Johnny that his birthday isn’t for another five days and Johnny it’s only your birthday today.

He tries to nod off again but Johnny isn’t having it. Jaehyun is shocked awake by a wet finger stuck right in his ear. He screams and wrestles Johnny off of him. They battle it out until Taemin is forced to come into the room, banging a pot in his hand.

“Are we having breakfast this morning or should I call for the police and let them know someone has replaced my two normally well-behaved wards with madmen?” 

Johnny had managed to wrestle his way back on top again so he’s pleased to end the fight there. Jaehyun will argue until his face is red that it was not fair because he was half asleep when Johnny decided to assault him. 

Johnny still helps him up though and they walk down into the kitchen together after they straighten themselves up a bit.

When they come into the kitchen it’s clear that Taemin prepared for celebration. There are vases of flowers all around, fragrant and vibrant even though the ground outside is still snow covered— his magic is not limited by the weather.

On the wall hangs a banner with both of their names and on the table is a lavish breakfast spread compared to their usual toast and fruits. Taemin looks so pleased with himself. Jaehyun feels something catch in his throat.

“But it’s your birthday.” He says quietly, scared if he raises his voice it’ll sound too wet. 

“I’ve always told you it’s ours.” Johnny says with a shrug. 

That’s just how he is. He doesn’t realize how much he gives Jaehyun. Like taking care of him is just second nature.

Jaehyun reaches for Johnny’s hand and squeezes it. “Thank you.” 

“Yes, thank you, Youngho.” Taemin says, turning away from a pot on the stove that is giving off a light pink steam. “Combining this into one celebration saves me the effort of doing this twice in a week.”

He always knows what to say. Jaehyun releases Johnny’s hand to give Taemin a hug and whispers him gratitude, too. 

“Make sure to remember this feeling when I have you repotting the rosemary next week, Yoonoh.” He says gently. Jaehyun just laughs.

Johnny doesn’t leave the house that morning. He sits with Jaehyun and Taemin until the coffee is cold. They pass jokes and stories around like serving plates and when the sun is high in the sky Taemin sends them off so he can do his work in peace.

“Put your coat on,” Johnny says, dragging Jaehyun towards the front door. Jaehyun furrows his brow, glancing out the window where snow is still stubbornly piled on the ground. He thought maybe they would go to their room, play games, read to each other.

He’s not excited to get cold, but the look Johnny is giving him tells him there is no saying no. 

“What is this? Are you planning to off me before I get taller than you?” Jaehyun teases as they step out into the cold. Johnny laughs, slipping his hand into Jaehyun’s.

“Who would I be without you?” He asks. The lilt to his voice is just off the key of joking. Jaehyun kicks snow at him. 

“A stick in the mud, I’m sure.” 

They share more laughs that they can see in the air, little puffs of breath floating away from them as they walk. Johnny leads Jaehyun into the woods, deeper than he’s used to going. 

“What’s this all about?” Jaehyun isn’t too put out by the journey. He’s used to being outside from working with Taemin, he’s pretty warm from holding on to Johnny. He’s just curious. This isn’t how birthdays usually go. Johnny looks too pleased with him, it’s suspicious. 

“Just trust me.” Johnny says. Then he stops walking and turns to Jaehyun with a serious look. “Actually, close your eyes.” 

Jaehyun does it without question because he does trust Johnny.

They don’t go much further. Once Johnny stops, Jaehyun does too. The elder slips a hand over Jaehyun’s eyes. “Alright, open your eyes once I move my hand.” 

It’s a slow countdown from three and then Jaehyun opens his eyes.

It’s not their clearing, because it couldn’t be. It’s close, though. Jaehyun knows magic must be involved. They’re tucked under a large willow tree and there’s no snow beneath the slope of the branches. Golden sunlight is filtering in, even in the overcast.

Flowers bloom that look suspiciously like the ones that were decorating their kitchen earlier. There’s a blanket laid out and beside it the book they’d been passing back and forth at night, taking turns reading out loud.

It’s not cold, even as the breeze rustles the leaves. Jaehyun loses his breath. 

“I know it’s not much. There’s much less decadence out here than what I could give you in the city.” Johnny sounds timid and Jaehyun resists the urge to tackle him to the ground. 

“Shut up. It’s perfect.”

They stay there for most of the day, tucked close together and working their way through the book. Jaehyun nearly falls victim to the siren call of a nap at one point, scales of his mind overflowing with content. Johnny punches his side and makes him read after that.

When the magic is fading, the sun sunk low beneath the horizon and the chill creeping into the safety of their cocoon, Johnny coaxes Jaehyun up and they make their way back home, hand in hand.

Dinner is not as much of an affair. Taemin gifts them both protection crystals.

He mentions that Johnny’s father has sent gifts from the castle, as well. It’s a trunk mostly filled with gorgeous clothes, cut from silk and velvet and garnished with silver and gold. Johnny says his thanks out loud then shuts the lid and asks if Taemin needs help cleaning up.

Jaehyun wonders, very briefly, if his own father even remembered his birthday. 

When all is said and done, it’s a perfect day. They bid goodnight to Taemin and head off to their room. 

“I think we both used a bit of Taemin’s magic,” Jaehyun says without any preamble.

He waited until Johnny settled into bed before he went digging in his bedside table. Johnny makes a noise of interest, watching the top of Jaehyun’s head from where he lay. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean,” Jaehyun says, standing with his hands behind his back. “Close your eyes.”

Johnny does so without question— Jaehyun is the only person he’s easy for. Jaehyun takes a breath and comes closer. He brushes the strands of Johnny’s hair behind his ears then sets a circlet of purple Asters on Johnny’s head.

Johnny blinks his eyes open after a short pause and reaches a gentle hand up to touch the flowers. 

“Asters,” Jaehyun starts, before Johnny has a chance to ask. “They’re charmed to stay in bloom so long as you’re happy.” 

It was not an easy feat getting Taemin to do the spell.

He made Jaehyun do all the legwork aside from the actual incantation. The final result was worth it, especially with the way Johnny beams at him. 

“Thank you, Hyunnie.” Johnny says before he pulls Jaehyun into a hug.

It’s a great birthday for both of them. Ever since they came to the mountains things seem so much less fragile. It feels more like a celebration than a victory, like Johnny was lucky to have crossed another year off. Jaehyun feels selfish to be as happy as he is. Both of them fall asleep grinning, sharing a bed like old times in the castle and wondering what another year of life could have in store for them.

\--

Winter fades to spring as stubborn flowers push their way through melting snow. Jaehyun learns more from Taemin every day, enough so that he starts going to town on his own, selling ointments and weaker vials of potions. He finds a place easily. Makes jokes with the townspeople, barters for meats and cheese to bring back for dinner (Taemin begrudgingly admits that Jaehyun is much better at that than him). 

Johnny still leaves in the morning, with the sunrise. He is golden in its wake and bubbly when he returns. 

They’re happy. They’ve found a place. 

“Do you want to try some magic, Yoonoh?” Taemin asks one day, after they’ve finished putting the stoppers on a batch of sleeping aid. 

Jaehyun looks over at him with wide eyes. He’s always wanted to ask, but figured it would just end in embarrassment when it turned out he couldn’t do magic. Taemin smiles like he knows exactly what Jaehyun is thinking.

“Don’t look at me like that. Anyone can do at least a little magic. It’s just about your intentions.” He doesn’t even give Jaehyun a chance to say no. “I have a feeling Youngho might need a little healing today.” 

Jaehyun has learned to never question it when Taemin ‘has a feeling.’ 

He does his favorite errand of running to the garden. Taemin’s garden is gorgeous; especially now that the air is getting warmer. The flowers bloom and reach out invitingly whenever Jaehyun walks through. He greets them all and is careful not to catch any of them with the handle of his basket or the tip of his sheers. 

He goes to where they keep the herbs and cuts fresh comfrey, lavender, and rose. When he gets back Taemin doesn’t say a word about the fact the spell doesn’t necessarily call for roses. 

They work into the early evening, muddling and dicing and brewing. Taemin tells Jaehyun to clear his mind and set his intentions, then they join hands and speak a blessing over the concoction.

Not a moment later Johnny comes crashing through the front door. 

“Well, you wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had!” He exclaims, making his way into the kitchen. Taemin has a private smile on display, spooning the mixture into a spare jar. Jaehyun looks at Johnny and gasps.

“What the hell did you do?” He runs over to Johnny, already reaching to take his face in his hands like the most natural thing in the world. There’s a cut running across his left cheek, close to the corner of his mouth. The blood is darker red, flaking at the edges. Jaehyun frowns, wondering how long Johnny left it bleeding before coming home. 

“Nothing, Yuta just caught me off guard.” Johnny shrugs. He nuzzles into Jaehyun’s palm then moves away, wrinkling his nose. “Be careful, you’ll get blood on your hands.”

Jaehyun just laughs, grabs Johnny’s wrist and takes him to the sink to start the process of cleaning him up. It’s easy. Johnny tilts his head and doesn’t make any noise at the slightest direction from Jaehyun, shuts his eyes under his touch. The cut is clean and dressed in minutes and Johnny blinks up at Jaehyun once he’s finished, a serene smile falling into place on his lips.

“You’re good at this.” 

“I would hope so. Taemin’s been teaching me for months,” Jaehyun’s cheeks go hot. He didn’t tell Johnny he helped make the salve. 

“I bet it’ll be healed over tomorrow.” Taemin says. They both forgot he was there and he didn't seem to mind at all as he sat in the corner and nursed a cup of tea. He looks as satisfied with Jaehyun’s work as Johnny is. 

The cut is healed the next day. Johnny is pliant again, letting Jaehyun run fingers over the barest trace of a scar. 

“You’re magic, Hyunnie.” Johnny says. 

“I’ll always protect you.” Jaehyun promises. 

\--

It goes on like that. 

Life is easy with Taemin. Jaehyun learns and so does Johnny. 

They trade their skills back and forth; Johnny familiarizing himself with plants in the garden and Jaehyun brandishing a sword with somewhat lacking finesse (he’s happy the skill has slowly separated from him). 

They both know, somewhere in the recesses of their minds, that they are preparing for something. At night, though, when they’re laid together and sharing stories about their days, it feels like nothing can touch them. 

Time passes in a blur of happy memories and shares sunsets. Fingers pricked on flower stems and botched sleeping potions and so many books. 

Before they know it it’s their birthday again (they never celebrate Taemin’s because he insists he doesn’t age). 

They promised each other no surprises this year. They go to the same willow tree and curl up together and read. The snow never reaches them there. The rain doesn’t either. They are indestructible. 

“Do you think eventually Taemin will kick us out?” Jaehyun asks, after they finish reading. The sun is teasing the horizon and Johnny’s lids are sinking slowly with it. 

“I think Taemin wouldn’t know what to do without us. Minho told me he didn’t like to be so solitary, but his garden couldn’t grow any closer to town.” 

“Do you think we’ll ever go back to the city?” Jaehyun asks, after he ponders the last answer for a minute. He doesn’t want to leave, but he’ll go wherever Johnny does. 

“I think we won’t have a choice.” Johnny stretches his arms, then pulls Jaehyun closer to him. They were reading a classic romance, because Taemin recommended it and they were both happy for a change of pace. The sky turns pink around them, it filters through the leaves and makes Johnny glow. 

“I don’t want to lose you,” Jaehyun says, reaching for Johnny’s hand and pulling it into his lap. He’s looked at that palm so many times since they were kids, the scar from when he fell is still there. They’ve tried to heal it with magic, but it’s an old wound and stubborn. 

“You won’t.” Johnny curls his hand around Jaehyun’s and looks up at him. His eyes are sincere and sparkling. “I know you worry about what Taemin said when we got here. But any life I live with you will be a grand one. So, don’t worry about us going back to the city. You have me.” 

Jaehyun wants to make a joke about Johnny getting too invested in the romance novel. It dies on his tongue when Johnny closes his eyes and moves closer. 

It feels like everything is on their side. Jaehyun feels a branch from the willow caress his neck. He closes his eyes, too. 

Their lips meet and it’s like time stops. The kiss is barely more than a brush of lips, though the meaning is deeper than that. Jaehyun blinks up at Johnny when he hears the breeze again. 

“Happy birthday, Hyunnie.” Johnny whispers.

“Happy birthday, Johnny.” Jaehyun whispers back. 

It’s a fragile moment, it’s perfect. They stay close to each other. The breeze is gentle and warm, even though it’s still winter. It’s never cold under the willow. Tendrils of Johnny’s hair come out from behind his ear and Jaehyun brushes them back without asking. 

They’ve always been tactile with each other. They’ve always been close. It’s like everything and nothing changes. 

When the sun finally disappears, they leave their spot and fireflies light their way back home. 

Taemin says nothing except there’s dinner on the stove and he hopes they had a good day. He’s wearing the same knowing smile, though. 

They stop sleeping in separate beds after that. 

\-- 

A promise is sacred between the two of them. They promise each other never to read ahead in books when the other isn’t around. They promise each other never to lie. They promise each other that they will take care of each other to the best of their abilities. They promise each other to be happy. 

Things really don’t change. 

Not until Johnny comes home in the middle of the afternoon, looking distressed and with a castle soldier in tow. Jaehyun meets them in the foyer, brows furrowed and hands shoved into his pockets to stop from reaching for Johnny. 

“Youngho, is everything okay?” Taemin asks, coming in from behind Jaehyun. 

Johnny looks shaken. He turns to the guard and gestures for him to speak. 

“I have orders to take the prince and his concierge back to the city. The king is dying.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so excited for this story and where it's about to go. I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has been following along so far both on twitter and on ao3. your comments are all so sweet and keep me going while i work through the emotional turmoil this story is putting me through. 
> 
> as always, you can find me on twitter @suhjpeg -- i update this story in pieces there and then cross post here when the chapters are complete. Thank you so much for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please look at the "Major character death," tag and proceed with caution. This chapter contains major character death, violence, blood, gore, and heavy angst. I love these characters more than anything in the world but I completely understand if you don't want to read beyond this.

Jaehyun knows about fate. He knows about praying to gods that won’t listen. He knows about destiny. He also knows about love. And he knows false hope. Somehow he’d managed to convince himself they were safe with Taemin, that fate couldn’t reach beyond the treetops. That he and Johnny would live forever, wrapped in each other and reading stories and in love. Heroes to each other in their pretend worlds— legends to each other. 

Good things don’t last though. 

A storm comes in on the coattails of the guard’s message. They hunker down for the night after navigating a tense discussion. Jaehyun wraps himself around Johnny and they hide under the covers like they’re kids (they never will be again). 

“It’ll be okay,” Jaehyun whispers, stroking fingers through Johnny’s hair. He’s been very quiet since he came home. He curls into Jaehyun and makes a soft sound then, finally, speaks. 

“I’ll be king after he passes.” 

Jaehyun thinks back to the letters Johnny wrote him, all the fear he had about being king. He frowns, kisses Johnny’s temple, and thinks their youth was wasted playing pretend. 

“Isn’t there anyone else?” Hope is the devil on Jaehyun’s shoulder, telling him to keep pressing. 

“Who else could it be?” Johnny’s voice is harsher than he intends. “My mother?” He scoffs.

It’s not that she couldn’t be a great ruler, but the people would never listen to her, not after the years she spent throwing herself into witchcraft and religion and constant prayers for Johnny’s life. 

“Minho?” Jaehyun asks, voice small. 

Johnny laughs again.

“He was a great general, yes, but he’s family from my mother’s side. The people want a king from my father’s blood.” 

Jaehyun wants to argue that point. Minho _ could  _ be king. There was nothing to stop that, whether or not he was only family by marriage.

Johnny is drawn tight and ready to attack, so Jaehyun keeps that to himself for now. The king wasn’t dead yet, maybe he would live. Maybe they would have a nice visit to the city and then come back to Taemin. Maybe nothing would need to change.

(You know what they say about hope).

“Go to sleep, Jaehyun. We are leaving as soon as the storm passes.” Johnny says when it becomes clear that Jaehyun has no response for him. 

Neither of them sleep well that night.

They leave in the morning without too much fanfare. Taemin presses gifts into each of their hands and whispers blessing into their ears when he hugs them goodbye. Something tugs at Jaehyun’s heart, begs him to just stay, but he waves goodbye just like Johnny.

He can’t let Johnny go alone. 

“I didn’t get to tell Yuta goodbye.” Johnny says an hour into their journey. The castle guard is in the front and looks like he’s trying not to be involved in their conversation. Jaehyun is bold, he slips his hand into Johnny’s.

“You’ll see him again.” Jaehyun says, even though it sounds more like a lie than a promise. 

Coming back is harder than leaving for Jaehyun. He’s worried for Johnny but also for himself. His father is somewhere in the city and he wonders if his room is still empty.

He doesn’t know what happens to him if Johnny takes the throne. Does he stay? They loved each other in private because Taemin allowed them that courtesy. Would the castle be the same? Would Johnny even want him there? 

Johnny doesn’t pull away the entire journey home.

Jaehyun thinks he has his answer.

“John!” Jaehyun will always remember the sound of Johnny’s mother shouting for him in the entrance of the castle. It’s desperate and clearly relieved, like she didn’t believe Johnny would be coming back to her. Jaehyun gives her space to rocket into Johnny’s arms and cherish him.

He understands completely. 

“It happened so fast. He was up one day and then the next he couldn’t leave bed, couldn’t eat, could barely keep his eyes open. He’s having trouble breathing, Johnny. You know I wouldn’t have called you here unless it was serious... he kept asking.”

She says it in a hurry, like she’s running away from it. Jaehyun never realized how small she was until he considered her here, in Johnny’s hold and swimming in her nightgown. He’s scared for her. 

“It’s okay, mom. We’ll be okay.” Johnny soothes, practiced lines.

Truthfully there is no saying if they’ll be okay. It’s no secret Johnny was sent to the mountains to avoid a war and as such lost a couple years of royal training. They came back to even rockier relations with Rosvo and Jaehyun is scared. Johnny is too.

They all keep saying it’ll be okay because there’s nothing else to say that doesn’t sound like giving up. And, privately, Jaehyun thinks that Johnny will make a great king. All of Taemin’s readings said he would be brilliant if he stepped into the role.

As much as Jaehyun wanted to avoid the truth, it was staring him in the face. 

“You need to go see him,” Johnny’s mother said, finally stepping away. Jaehyun ached for the comfort of his embrace, too. 

“Okay, I will.” Johnny reaches out for Jaehyun and his mother tsks.

“ _ Alone _ .” 

Johnny doesn’t argue with her and Jaehyun doesn’t feel hurt. He knows his place is not by a king’s side. As Johnny walks away, his mother turns to Jaehyun. 

“You should know your father disowned you.” She does not sound the least bit apologetic.

“I did not come by the information willingly, but he made enough of a commotion that the handmaidens felt inclined to gossip.” Her gaze is hard on Jaehyun while she speaks, colder than she’s ever been with Johnny. 

“You weren’t supposed to go with him.”

Jaehyun inclines his head in a silent apology. He knows when to be quiet. 

“He loves you.” She follows with, voice lacking any inflection. “You will stay here.” 

That’s enough to make Jaehyun look up. His surprise must be easily read because she waves a dismissive hand.

“Once he is king I won’t be able to keep you away, anyways. At least now it is one less argument between us.” She points a long, bejeweled finger right at Jaehyun’s chest. “You are not welcome in my eyes.”

Jaehyun can only nod again.

He has already resigned himself to being a shield in whatever way he can be. The relief he feels knowing he can do it from within the castle walls makes him feel lighter, emboldened. He takes the queen’s hand into his and bows before her.

“I swore to him I would protect him.” 

She pulls her hand away. 

“What good is the oath of a nobody?” With that she retreats, reminding Jaehyun once more that he may love Johnny, but he will never be family.

Johnny’s father was a strong man. Not just in body, but in mind. He was known for his benevolent hand as he ruled and his military strategies. People respected him. No one could name a time they ever saw him looking weak, powerless, or defeated. He was the king of kings.

When Johnny enters the room he does not see the king of kings. He sees a man; ashen, sunken into the bed, covered in a sheen of sweat. The curtains are drawn and Johnny assumes that’s because of the light sensitivity (one of the maids was whispering as he passed by).

The closer Johnny gets the worse the situation is. His father is shivering even beneath the monstrous pile of blankets. His breaths are shaky and loudly pushed out of his mouth. He barely opens his eyes when he hears Johnny approaching and can hardly move a hand to reach for him.

“My son.” He rasps then closes his eyes again. Johnny holds back a sob and sits beside his father. 

“I’m here.” He says softly, takes the offered hand between his own and tries to believe his father could come back from this.

The air is stale with sickness.

Johnny sees flowers on the bedside but their fragrance can’t fix what needs an open window. They’re vibrant purple in the din of the room and Johnny feels guilty for the fleeting thought of Jaehyun he has while sitting with his father. 

“Was Taemin well?”

Johnny smiles. Of course his father would try to pretend things are okay. 

“Yes, he was well. You should’ve asked for him, maybe he can heal you.”

“Don’t be foolish, John. Your mother might believe in magic but I don’t. I trust our physician.” It seems to take a lot of effort for him to say as much. He takes a break to inhale and exhale, his chest heavy with strain. “He thinks it’ll be a miracle if I last the week.” 

Johnny doesn’t know what to say to that.

He slips to the floor, sits on his knees by his father’s head and rests his forehead to the mattress. With his father’s hand between his own he does what his mother always taught him. He prays to gods he hasn’t acknowledged since he went to the mountains.

He prays to gods he didn’t know about until he read through Taemin’s library. He wills the universe, the fates, anyone who will listen, to let him keep his father. He is selfish in that request, he doesn’t care about the country while he asks for it.

He stays like that for what feels like hours. Until he legs cramp and his tears dry. His father is mostly silent above him, laboring through his breaths and making noises of comfort. 

“That’s enough, John. I’m at peace knowing I leave you behind to take my place.”

Johnny feels guilty again for how much he wishes someone else could do it instead. He almost asks about Minho, but he can’t leave his father disappointed on his deathbed. 

“It’s an honor.” Johnny says instead. “I promise the country will thrive as it always has.”

He promises to make his father proud and tries not to dwell on what that might all entail. 

He’s shooed from the room shortly after, told that his father needs to rest and they can see each other again in the morning.

Johnny’s father passes away in his sleep that night. 

When Johnny wakes up, it’s to the news his coronation is five days away.

It rains for three days, like the sky is in mourning too. 

Johnny dresses in black and tries to walk the castle like a dignitary but it’s hard when his eyes are constantly clouded. People don’t look at him like a new ruler, it’s with the same pity they did when he was a child.

He tries to visit Jaehyun. Whenever he asks about him his mother shakes her head and says “later.” Johnny doesn’t want to wait for later. 

He’s terrified of how quickly everything is changing and he wants to see Jaehyun before he’s king. He wants to ask about backup plans and running away.

He suspects that is the exact reason why his mother is keeping them apart. 

The night before his coronation it’s still raining. It feels like the storm followed them from the mountains. It feels like a sign. Johnny is superstitious because of his mother and his stomach turns.

He doesn’t get Jaehyun. He gets Minho, instead. 

“I’m scared.” Johnny makes himself admit after he’s been sitting with Minho in relative silence for a beat too long. Minho would never scold him for admitting something like that.

“That’s natural, John. Your whole life is about to change.” He sounds sage as ever, sat across from Johnny by the hearth. It’s not necessarily cold, Johnny just felt comforted by the inconsistency of the flames.

“Would you be scared?” He asks because it’s all he can think about.

Minho came from a background of power in the army. Johnny came from hiding in the gardens and hiding in the mountains and cowering at the feet of statues. 

“I think we are in two very different situations.” Is what he says, hardly an answer. Johnny is not affronted.

“I feel like I don’t even know what happens next. People aren’t going to listen to me.” He’ll be king by blood only. He hasn’t proved himself. 

“I’ll be with you, John. Your father’s whole staff will be behind you. You have nothing to worry about.”

His uncle reaches over and puts a hand over his. “And, if that’s too much to consider, there aren’t any guards in the west wing where your Jaehyun is. And no one would see you if you left through the gardens.” 

Johnny’s brows furrow and he looks up at Minho.

Clearly his uncle isn’t suggesting he run away (no matter how much he thought about it himself). But was that his blessing for Johnny to love Jaehyun? Did that mean Jaehyun could fit into his life still? 

“He’ll stay with me when I’m king.” It’s easier to talk about Jaehyun. He’s familiar. He is family in a way his mother will never be able to be, Minho could never be. 

Minho only nods in response. They sit and listen to the fire crackle for a little while longer and then Minho excuses himself for bed. 

The sky has been dark for awhile.

Johnny considers going to bed, because he knows someone will come to wake him early in the morning. Then he considers what Minho said about the west wing and Jaehyun. 

It’s an easy decision.

Since the castle is in mourning there aren’t any visitors. It’s outside of the normal since there is a coronation coming, but Johnny is thankful for it. It means the visiting wing is deserted and the chances of Johnny barging in on a distant relative are non-existent.

He doesn’t know where Jaehyun is, so he checks every door. Finally, towards the end of the hall, he sees light filtering from under the door. He grins and knocks softly, just in case. 

Jaehyun opens the door and he’s dressed in black and beautiful as ever.

They don’t say anything to each other. Johnny all but throws himself into Jaehyun’s arms and they topple back into the room. Jaehyun’s pretty used to Johnny throwing his weight around, so he holds firm and keeps them both upright.

“I’m scared,” Johnny tries again. Minho wouldn’t judge him, but Jaehyun would understand. 

“It’s going to be okay, angel.” Jaehyun tries to soothe. He wrangles all of Johnny and his limbs into the bed and holds him tightly. 

“What if it isn’t?” 

“Then it isn’t.”

It’s just as simple as that in Jaehyun’s eyes. He’s watched Johnny grow up for years, he knows what Johnny is capable of and how Johnny processes stress. There isn’t any talking him down until he talks himself down. 

“You’ll stay with me even if I’m a terrible king?”

“Johnny, I think you’ve forgotten how many times I played your vassal in the forest.” Jaehyun laughs soft against his skin. “You were an _awful_ king.”

Johnny whines incoherently. 

“But I always came back, didn’t I?” 

“You didn’t have any other friends.” Johnny accuses.

“And I did just fine without them!” Jaehyun squeezes Johnny around the middle in warning. “You have always been great. You will be great. And if you aren’t... we’ll get to that later.” 

Johnny’s hand finds Jaehyun’s and threads their fingers together.

“Nothing changes between you and me, right?” 

“Of course not,” Jaehyun says soberly. And then he can’t stop himself from adding, “your highness.” 

Johnny groans and pretends to try rolling away from him. 

“Please don’t call me that.” He says sincerely.

He turns in Jaehyun’s arms and meets his eyes. “I can handle it from anyone else. But to you... I’m Johnny. Nothing has to change between us.” 

Jaehyun feels something honey-thick flood his veins. He nods. “Okay. Nothing changes between us.” 

Johnny looks pleased with that.

“Don’t let me fall asleep. If I’m not in my room tomorrow morning then I’ll start my reign in a scandal.” 

Jaehyun promises not to let him fall asleep. 

They’re both woken up hours later by one of the younger guards, who happened to notice Johnny sneak away.

“I’m sorry to intrude, your highness, but you’ll want to be back in your room within the hour.” The young man says, bowing the whole time. Johnny and Jaehyun disentangle, cheeks bright red. 

“Thank you, Doyoung. I’ll just be a minute.” 

Doyoung says nothing else.

Jaehyun covers laughter in his hands and then presses it against Johnny’s lips. 

“You’ll be amazing,” Jaehyun promises. 

“For you.” Johnny returns.

The next time Jaehyun sees Johnny, he’s the king. Nothing changes and everything does all at once.

Jaehyun has never been to a coronation but it feels like a ritual. It feels private. Secret. 

Since the kingdom is in mourning, it is not a public event. Jaehyun sneaks in with the castle help and a blessing from Minho as long as he stays quiet. 

It’s been overcast since they came back to the kingdom. The air is cold and unwelcoming. The great hall is empty save for the red aisle runner and the guests who are important enough to be invited. Jaehyun holds his breath when Johnny is announced.

He is beautiful in red. 

It’s clear they’ve cut his hair, it’s shorter, falling just above his collar but still golden. He’s dressed clean with an honest to god cloak trailing behind him as he walks in, boots immaculate, head held high. 

He is beautiful no matter what. 

Jaehyun aches to be close to him. Aches to reach out, hold him, remind him things are going to be okay. That king or not he is a person first. 

The crowd is silent. It’s haunting, a near parallel of the funeral from just a few days before, everyone watching with bated breath. 

At the front of the room is the bishop and Johnny’s mother and Minho. They are waiting to receive him and there is a spot beside them where his father should be. There is no king to hand his crown off from. Just an empty throne and a squire holding the crown.

Johnny does not waiver. 

Jaehyun feels like his ears are filled with cotton when the bishop starts speaking. Johnny swears an oath to the kingdom, something that sounds an awful lot like he’s giving up everything for this title. 

Jaehyun has never felt as alone as he does standing there, watching Johnny put his hand on the bible and say the words that take him from a prince to a king. Jaehyun feels like he’d only just started getting to know Johnny, the real Johnny, and now he has to grapple with the entire kingdom for his heart. 

He mourns this privately, because no one standing at his side could ever come close to understanding. 

He watches the crown descend onto Johnny’s head in slow motion. It’s another long moment when Johnny sits on the throne. And one final stretch of breath as the Bishop hands Johnny the scepter.

He makes a gorgeous picture like that. Decadent in the velvet and glowing in the cheers that slowly erupt from the small crowd. Beneath the jewels, and the gold, and the title, he is still Johnny though. Jaehyun sees the falter in his smile, the smallest twitch on the left side of his mouth. 

They meet eyes for a fraction of a second, Jaehyun convinces himself Johnny was looking for him. 

Then everything speeds up. 

Jaehyun still doesn’t grasp what’s happening. Something muddled in years of traditions, Johnny doesn’t say anything else after his oath. The bishop speaks, the queen speaks, even Minho speaks. All Jaehyun can do is look for Johnny and wait for him to look back. 

He doesn’t. He can’t. His back is straight and he’s looking at the people he will be addressing as a superior moving forward.

If Jaehyun closes his eyes, while the crowd murmurs and the ceremony continues, he can pretend he’s in town with Taemin, waiting to sell some potions and ready to go home to Johnny. 

There is no more going home to Johnny. They haven’t talked about it, but Jaehyun is nearly positive the rest of their lives (where they can intersect) will be sneaking into bedrooms and hoping to brush palms on the tournament grounds. 

The queen says something about letting the celebration begin. It doesn’t seem polite to cheer when the celebration is on the coattails of the funeral. When the room is only half full and people further from town don’t even know the king has died-- well, the old king. 

Johnny is king now. 

They move to the dining hall. Jaehyun is not invited that far. 

\--

He paces his own room anxiously for the rest of the night. 

As far as he understood the itinerary, there would be a five course meal and then some entertainment. Possibly some dances, though Jaehyun could not imagine Johnny dancing when the soil is still fresh on his father’s grave.

The sun has long since disappeared when Jaehyun finally settles onto his mattress, kicks his shoes off, and starts counting sheep. 

It’s been a hard adjustment going from sharing the bed with Johnny and falling asleep to lazy kisses, to sleeping alone with only the sound of his own breathing. 

Which is why Jaehyun doesn’t expect a knock on his door. He barely even believes it when he hears it. Not until the door opens and Doyoung sticks his head in with the light from the hallway filtering behind him.

“Jaehyun, the king is requesting you.” 

The king. 

Jaehyun grapples with that while his body moves on autopilot, surprised awake and grabbing for a robe and some shoes. He isn’t actually sure where Johnny’s room is in relation to his own. 

“What time is it?” He asks when he steps out of his room, just for something to say. 

Doyoung starts leading him down the hall. “Just past midnight.” 

It’s the end of the conversation. 

Doyoung clearly knows there is something deeper going on between him and Johnny. Jaehyun wonders if that’s okay or if there will be consequences in the future. 

Doyoung doesn’t look too uncomfortable when he stops in front of a door and gestures towards it. “Good evening.” 

Then he’s gone and it’s just Jaehyun, the wood door, and Doyoung’s retreating shadow. 

Johnny is behind that door. King Seo. His royal highness. Jaehyun’s lover. 

He doesn’t bother knocking, trying to force himself to remember he is past formalities with Johnny. No ceremony changes their hearts that quickly.

Johnny is pacing the room when Jaehyun enters, cloak still trailing behind him, crown haphazard on his head, a glass of wine half filled in his hand. 

It’s so-- Johnny. Jaehyun breathes a soft laugh and shuts the door behind him. 

“Baby,” he says, pulling Johnny’s attention away from the window he’s currently stewing over. 

He is still a gorgeous picture in the glow of the lamplight, a light flush in his skin, and a smile taking over his features. “Baby,” he greets in return, setting his glass down and crossing the distance between them with a few steady paces. 

He backs Jaehyun against the door and nuzzles into his neck. Jaehyun thinks he was a fool down in the great hall, lamenting the loss of this warmth as if Johnny wasn’t the most stubborn person he’s ever known. 

“I missed you.” Johnny says. It’s just that simple. 

Jaehyun wonders if it can always be this way. How long can the candle burn on both ends? 

“I missed you more.” He feels like he’s living on borrowed time. He doesn’t know how long the queen’s pardon will last or how far Minho’s welcome extended. He tries to convince himself that now isn’t the time to worry about it. Not when Johnny is pushing hands under his shirt and mouthing at his skin. 

“I’m the king now.” He says. Again, it’s just that simple. 

Jaehyun tries to imagine any other outcome but his mind draws a blank. Even when they were hiding in the mountains, it was clear Johnny was destined for more than sharing breakfast at that table with the wobbly leg. 

_ “You heard Taemin, Johnny! You don’t have to be king! You do this and you’re basically signing your death certificate.” Jaehyun shouted. It was early morning, they were supposed to be heading back to the city soon. Johnny was uncharacteristically stoic.  _

_ “And what would you have me do instead, Jaehyun? Stay here with you? Watch you tend the garden and make your potions and pretend there’s nothing more I could do for people than fight with Yuta in the woods and entertain the children?” It was the first Johnny spoke since they got out of bed, words like venom.  _

_ Jaehyun flinched away. _

_ “I’m sorry I’m too simple for you.” He murmured, turning to his bag of things and trying to decide whether or not he should keep packing. He didn’t want to fight with Johnny, but he couldn’t hold his tongue while it felt like they were about to march to his death.  _

_ “Jaehyun…” Johnny was behind him a moment later, arms around his waist and lips at his ear. “I would give anything to have a thousand more days with you here. But I have a duty to my father.”  _

_ It was a well-aimed knife. Jaehyun knew exactly what it was like to feel loyal to a family and a name. He only felt a little betrayed that this was the first Johnny ever spoke of it.  _

_ “Furthermore, I have a duty to the country.” He kissed Jaehyun’s neck, an apology.  _

_ “I don’t want to lose you.” Jaehyun said, placing his hands over Johnny’s. He lost count of how many times he had said that to Johnny over the years.  _

_ “Look, we all think it’s a war that’ll kill me, right? I just won’t declare a war.” Another kiss, this one a promise. “I have no reason to go to war.”  _

“You’re the king now.” Jaehyun says, defeated. He doesn’t want to think of the hourglass looming over them but it’s there and Johnny’s life is sand in the wind. 

“Hey,” Johnny pulls back and cups Jaehyun’s cheek, moves him until their eyes meet. “You know what that means right?” 

Of course Jaehyun knows what it means. It means this; after midnight, voices low, touches where no one can see them. It means Johnny and Jaehyun on separate wings and Jaehyun not knowing what to do with himself anymore. It means he went from his father’s shadow to Johnny’s. 

“Baby?” Johnny’s voice is as gentle as his thumb, a soft touch below Jaehyun’s eyes that makes him realize he’s started crying, just the slightest bit. “What’s wrong?” 

Johnny is wearing a crown while he asks, that’s what’s wrong. They’re in the castle and not Taemin’s house, that’s what’s wrong. They’re going to wake up in the morning and Johnny is going to address the country, that’s what’s wrong. His chest heaves and Johnny holds him. Jaehyun isn’t sure if he’s said any of that out loud. 

“Jaehyun, you’re misunderstanding the situation. I’m the king now. My mother doesn’t have the same power over me as she used to.” He takes Jaehyun’s chin between his thumb and forefinger and makes him look up. They share a soft look, meaning clear if you looked hard enough. “I want to make you my consort.” 

It’s a good thing Johnny has Jaehyun against the door, because his knees tremble and he nearly falls. 

“You can’t mean that.” 

Consort-- Johnny was asking Jaehyun to address the nation beside him. As his partner. 

“I do mean it. Traditionally we would have named my consort at my coronation but it was all so rushed and, well, you know how my mother feels about you.” 

Jaehyun knows. She has never made it subtle that she thought Jaehyun did not belong in Johnny’s orbit. Or that she thought Jaehyun would be Johnny’s undoing. Or that she thought Johnny would grow out of him. 

But Johnny is standing before him in his crown and glory and asking him for something that means ‘for the rest of our lives.’ And Jaehyun doesn’t think he can give him that. 

“Johnny, I’m not… I’m not royalty. I’m not even technically finished with a formal education.” Johnny knows this, Jaehyun thinks he needs reminding.

Johnny does not look happy to hear those words. He ducks and kisses the tail end from Jaehyun’s mouth. “Should that change my mind? No one knows me like you, Jaehyun, and no one else ever will.” 

Something heavy sinks in Jaehyun’s chest.

“Are you just saying that because you’re worried no one else will have time?” 

Johnny’s expression shutters. He keeps his hands curled around Jaehyun’s cheeks, his grip slips the slightest bit. 

“Why do you constantly have to think about the end? We are happy now, aren’t we? I have all the power in my hands. I won’t declare war, I promised you that already. Maybe we beat fate. No one ever mentioned my father dying.” He kisses Jaehyun again and it feels like a plea. 

“I won’t have anyone else stand by my side, Jaehyun,” he continues. “You don’t have to say yes, but stop falling back on my fate as an excuse.” 

Jaehyun feels something like guilt eating away at him. For just one selfish minute he considered how painful it would be to love Johnny just to lose him. Selfishly, he considered trying to leave it all behind. Then he looked into the depths of Johnny’s eyes and realized that to leave him would still be living without him, and his biggest regret would be letting Johnny go without loving him to the last second. 

“I’ll stay with you.” Jaehyun concedes. “But I don’t want a title.” 

Johnny makes a noise of confusion and cocks his head to the side.

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean, it’s bad enough the people around the castle know about us. I won’t have you sully your image to the entire country your first day as king. I’m an orphan, now. And even if my father hadn’t disowned me, his name wasn’t worth enough to get me into the royal family.” 

It is the most infuriating thing about Johnny, how he lived so far removed from consequences that he could ask Jaehyun to be his consort and not worry about the implications. He still has the audacity to look confused when Jaehyun finishes speaking. 

“I don’t care what the country thinks, Jaehyun. I want you. I’ve never felt as sure as anything that you’re the other half of my soul.”

Jaehyun laughs because he can’t think of any other reaction. They’ve grown together, he’s watched Johnny become a man from a boy, but he could still be so childish with his desires. 

“Am I not enough as I am?” He doesn’t mean to betray himself and reveal such a raw insecurity. 

“Jaehyun.” Less a plea, more acceptance. “Of course I’ll have you as you are. I always have.”

Jaehyun reaches to cover Johnny’s hands with his own. 

“Then have me.” He pulls Johnny in for another kiss, this one lingering. He speaks muffled words against the plush of Johnny’s lips. “Have me as the boy you found in the woods, and the one you wrote letters to, and the one you’ve gone on a thousand adventures with. Have me as Chulwoo’s son, an orphan, Yoonoh, or Jaehyun. But don’t ask me to pretend I’m something other than that. I don’t deserve to be known by the country.” 

Johnny makes a broken sound and when he pulls back from Jaehyun’s mouth his eyes are glistening. 

“I think you misunderstand what I’m asking of you.” Then he steps away from Jaehyun, gives him the chance to move from the door and breathe. “I’m not asking you for this because I want to shackle you to me, or because I’m afraid to be with an orphan for the rest of my life. I’m asking you this so that you can see the two of us as I always have.” 

He does something inexplicable next. Jaehyun watches as Johnny reaches up and pulls the crown from his head. The moment passes slowly as he steps closer again and places it onto Jaehyun’s head. 

“Equals.” He says softly, reaching to take Jaehyun’s hand and lead him to the bed. He’s careful as he guides Jaehyun to sit. 

Jaehyun feels halfway frozen. The weight of the crown is nearly driving him off center. The weight of Johnny’s words? Worse. 

Johnny leaves Jaehyun there for a moment. Enough time that Jaehyun almost comes up with something to say. But then he comes back, head adorned with that makeshift crown of purple Asters, and Jaehyun knows he would follow Johnny anywhere. 

“Johnny--” Johnny cuts Jaehyun off with a finger pressed to his lips then pushes him back to lay on the bed. When Johnny climbs over him, the cloak is still hanging from his shoulders and Jaehyun wordlessly reaches up to untie it and coax it to the floor. 

“You don’t have to say yes.” The trail of Johnny’s mouth down Jaehyun’s throat feels more reverent than persuasive. “You can forget the whole thing.” Johnny’s hands are at the buttons of Jaehyun’s shirt, working it open so there is more skin to worship. “Just know I only ask for you and even without the title I won’t let anyone misunderstand that you are it for me.” 

Jaehyun is choking on the sharp edges of vowels and consonants that won’t come out. He threads fingers through the length of hair at the back of Johnny’s head, careful not to jostle the flowers, the crown he’s kept since they made adolescent promises to each other. 

“I don’t want to lose you,” is what Jaehyun manages to say, melting under Johnny’s passion. 

“You won’t.” Johnny says easily, their well-rehearsed script. 

Jaehyun only wishes he could will himself to say more. The three words that people are born yearning to hear. They feel like a nail in the coffin, though, so Jaehyun slips his eyes shut and thinks them loudly in his head. He can almost imagine Johnny saying them, too. 

As much as Jaehyun expects a disaster when Johnny is announced, things don’t really change following his ascension to the throne. The threat of war that had driven Jaehyun and Johnny to the mountains had been settled in negotiations and the country was at relative peace.

People mourned their king, of course. Johnny received visits from officials all over the country, and words of support from their allies elsewhere. 

Only a week into his new role, Jaehyun knew why Johnny was destined for this. He took over training the guard.

The men who sparred with him were awestruck at his abilities. He could command them without them being bitter about his absence from the castle. 

He joined meetings with his uncle and immediately had ideas about strategies. No one questioned him.

He made appearances in the city, accepted consolations from thousands of countrymen, and no one batted an eye. 

He was a vision. And wherever he went he insisted Jaehyun be invited as well.

Jaehyun did not always join. It felt too private to be present when Johnny was speaking about his father to other dignitaries. And since Jaehyun declined a title, there were certain meetings he didn’t have a right to join. 

He didn’t waste his days, though.

He spent a lot of time in the library or writing to Taemin. Minho caught him in the hallways one evening and directed him to the castle physician. “I’m sure he wouldn’t decline an extra set of hands.” 

Taemin taught Jaehyun magic, blessings and potions and energy.

Taeil taught Jaehyun medicine. What couldn’t be healed by salves could be helped with splints or bed rest or any combination of therapies. 

He also showed Jaehyun around the gardens, corners of it he’d never seen before. 

“Is it your garden?” Jaehyun asks while pulling weeds.

“The queen’s actually. Though she stopped tending it when Johnny was born. I couldn’t let it go to waste, not when it’s right outside my window.” Taeil laughs but it’s not such a whimsical thought. 

The queen letting the garden wilt in favor of Johnny. Jaehyun understands jumping from one obsession to another. He picks flowers under Taeil’s watchful eye and sets them on Johnny’s bedside before he settles in for the night. 

It’s almost too good to be true.

(It is).

They say bad things happen in threes. 

Johnny has been king for seven months when they happen in quick succession. 

The crops start to wilt. An awful storm floods the cities on the coast. A new king takes the throne in Rosvo.

“I’m not sure I’m cut out for this.” Johnny whispers that night, an arm around Jaehyun’s middle and almost too quiet to hear. 

Jaehyun considers pretending to sleep, so that Johnny can make his confessions without feeling like he’s admitting defeat. He decides to turn over and face Johnny, nosing under his chin. “Of course you are. If not you, then who? That’s what you said to me. Remember?” 

Johnny doesn’t say anything to that, just presses his lips to the crown of Jaehyun’s head and breathes deeply. Jaehyun isn’t sure if Johnny actually falls asleep that night. They both stay silent until the sun rises, great pretenders.

“Can you come with me today? I know you’d rather be with Taeil but...” Johnny asks in the morning, when he’s buttoning his shirt and Jaehyun is trying to tame his bed head. 

He won’t say he needs Jaehyun and Jaehyun knows it’s because he’s afraid to look weak.

Something new that manifested since he became king, something that Jaehyun privately hates. 

“Of course I will.” 

The meetings themselves really aren’t bad, Jaehyun just feels out of place. They usually talk in tongues that Jaehyun can’t hope to decode.

Today is different. 

The men around the table look haggard. Perhaps they all wished they could have someone by their side as well. Jaehyun understands why when Johnny sits at the head and starts talking.

“I’ll start with the bad news.” From the looks on everyone’s faces, they already know the bad news. 

“The storms have taken out the majority of our ports in the south. The flooding has mostly affected rural areas, but we don’t have a final number of fatalities.”

Johnny shuffles through some papers in front of him. No one else makes a sound. 

“Most of the farmland has been untouched by the storms, but the some farmers are sending news that harvests this year have... left something to be desired.” 

Then Johnny takes a steadying breath.

“Finally, there was a realigning of the crown in Rosvo. The new King’s name is Kun Qian. He has sent word he will not be honoring the last treaty signed by my father and the previous king.”

“What exactly does that mean?” Jaehyun looks where the voice comes from and thinks he recognizes the man as the head of the guard— Mark. 

“It means,” Johnny says, loud enough to quiet the soft rumblings that have started. “That he does not want to honor our trade agreements.”

More rumbling. Johnny narrows his eyes at the room. 

“That’s all it means for now. It’s not just us. He’s dissolved agreements with the East Republic as well.” 

“So this is the war then?” The man that speaks this time is Minho’s right-hand, Jongin. 

“It’s absolutely not war.”

Johnny’s voice is hard and shoulders set as he says it. Jaehyun’s stomach drops. They are in front of at least fifteen other men in the room and all he wants to do is take Johnny’s hand.

“We have no reason to declare war as of yet.” Johnny starts again.

“He simply won’t honor the old agreements. It seems like he might be open to new ones. So let’s all just focus on the more important matters.” 

The room erupts at that. It’s not that Johnny has misspoken but every man seems to have priorities in each of the little disasters.

There’s Soonyoung with his family in the south. And Donghyuck who came from a poor country and lived through famine before. And loudly insisting the war is coming is Jongin, who Minho cannot get to quiet down. 

Johnny is lost in it.

We can’t worry about a non-existent war, your highness. We need to send men to help in the south.” That’s Taeyong, sitting close enough to Johnny that his voice can cut through the ruckus. 

Johnny nods. He’s listening, but clearly thinking of something else.

“No!” Donghyuck has chanced moving closer. “Listen to me, if famine comes you’ll be dealing with war within the country itself. People turn on each other when they’re hungry.” 

Jaehyun is swayed by that argument. Johnny is sitting firm and listening to everyone.

Jaehyun wants to hear Donghyuck. Everyone else in the room lived in Vislia their entire lives, Donghyuck was the only one with an outside perspective. 

But Donghyuck could hardly speak over the group Jongin had gathered in the back.

They were already discussing the best route to Rosvo borders, the best weapons, who would lead the squadrons. 

Jaehyun turns back to Johnny just as he stands. 

“That’s enough!” Silence follows.

“I have always allowed you free space to speak in this room, but do not forget I am your king. Sit.” 

Jaehyun’s eyes are fixed on Johnny, unaware where this voice came from. The only sound is that of chairs scraping the floor as men return to their places at the table.

Johnny sits as well, moving his chair somewhat closer to Jaehyun’s. 

“We will divide and conquer. Mark, you will lead a rescue team to the south. Donghyuck, I’d like you to create an outline of what did and did not work while your country faced this same issue.”

Jongin was scowling at his side of the table, Minho had a firm hand on his shoulder. This last piece was the most important. What to do about Kun? 

“Taeyong, I’d like you to petition King Qian to visit us here, we can talk about new negotiations.”

“And tell him we’ll host Hyunwoo as well. That way he doesn’t have to waste time making the same visit to the east.” 

Everyone takes their orders with quick bows of the head and no questions. When the room clears, Minho stays behind.

Jaehyun wonders if he should leave and then thinks better of it. He’s never felt unwelcome in Minho’s presence. 

“Well, no one said it would be easy.” Minho takes the seat to Johnny’s left. “You did well.” 

“I don’t feel like it.” 

“Your father never did, either.”

You know what they say about hope. 

Jaehyun pins all his hope on Taeyong’s retreating figure. 

He doesn’t feel good about the storm. Or the famine. And especially not about Kun.

“It’s going to be okay,” Jaehyun and Johnny take turns whispering to each other at night. Between kisses, soft touches, and their hopes. 

It’s going to be okay.

You know what they say about hope. 

Taeyong is solemn when he comes into the conference room five days later. 

“He won’t come here,” Taeyong says once everyone is seated. “He says since you are petitioning him, you should go to him.” 

Johnny scoffs and sits back in his seat. “That’s ridiculous.”

Taeyong looks like he had been anticipating that reaction. He sits beside Johnny and hands over a letter. “He’s actually pretty nice, Johnny. I think he just wants to be seen as equal.” 

“Well, he can be seen as equal here.” Johnny gestures to their surroundings.

It’s not a secret that Vislia is known for its decadence. Jaehyun thinks he sees the moment Johnny sets his intentions. 

It’s not a good feeling.

Jaehyun feels strange keeping to life as normal. He tends to the garden and eats three meals a day which feels inappropriate when he joins meetings with Johnny and they talk about the people in the country who are starving, who are without homes.

Half the royal guard is in the south reconstructing the ports and finding ways to re-home the people there. 

Donghyuck has been sent to the neighboring countries (Rosvo excluded) to seek assistance. Most notably grain and vegetables.

When they come to the conference room the table is usually only half full. And that’s including Jaehyun, who is faithfully by Johnny’s side but never speaks. He feels out of depth, even after so many years spent with Johnny.

The biggest crisis Jaehyun ever averted was his father.

Taeyong came in with a rain cloud, Donghyuck came in like a hurricane. 

“People are dying! People are rioting! Hyunwoo said he’ll send us his war rations and that’ll be enough for a month or so but what then?”

“That’ll do for now.” Johnny says.

Jaehyun is jarred by how calm Johnny can be while Donghyuck sits before them, crying and talking about the horrors he’d seen between the port and the republic of the east. 

“There’s better crops in the west and Seungcheol is sending some livestock.”

Jaehyun is amazed Johnny can gloss over the fact people are dying. Currently dying. 

Every time Jaehyun sees Donghyuck for the rest of the week, he’s crying.

It’s worse when the week starts new again. 

Doyoung wakes Johnny and Jaehyun before the sun rises, only half apologetic and completely urgent. 

“I’m sorry, it’s just... Kun’s sent a messenger.”

In all their concerns about their people surviving they forgot about the war.

He calls himself Yangyang and when he smiles there’s an awful lot of teeth, or at least that’s what Jaehyun hears after the fact. 

“Why wouldn’t you have an audience with him?” Jaehyun asks. They always wait until the end of the night to discuss things like this.

Jaehyun doesn’t like to question Johnny in front of anyone else. Johnny doesn’t mind, has never minded. But Jaehyun worries about hurting Johnny’s image. 

“It’s insulting! He sent a... a messenger pigeon when I requested _ him. _ ”

Jaehyun is already in bed for the night. Johnny is pacing. 

“He thinks just because my father died.... he thinks just because I’m young... he thinks he can intimidate me? Send some  _ kid _ ... lie about sending us food, helping rebuild...”

He’s not even talking to Jaehyun anymore. He’s talking to himself. He’s rambling. He won’t look in Jaehyun’s direction. 

“Baby, come to bed.” 

“He thinks I’ll just bend to his will.”

“Baby, it’s late.”

“He thinks he can lie to me. Insult me.” 

“Baby, you need sleep.”

\--

Donghyuck is crying again. 

This time Jaehyun is too. 

“I don’t understand, hyunnie.” They met in the garden, because they knew it would be private. “Rosvo is our closest neighbor and Kun is offering shelter to our homeless, food, and trade. All he wants is one port.”

Donghyuck is crying from the frustration. Jaehyun is crying because he feels hopeless— because every night he watches Johnny pace in their bedroom and he can’t find the words to convince him. Because every death feels like it’s been signed by him.

“I know, Hyuckie, I know. He just wants to do right by his father.” 

Donghyuck doesn’t understand the way Jaehyun does. He cries. He leans against Jaehyun and cries until the sky is dark red and the sunflowers are drooping. 

Jaehyun thinks he has to do something.

Jaehyun usually beats Johnny to bed. But this time Jaehyun is out late. 

He can’t stop thinking about Donghyuck crying, and the boy with too many teeth, about Kun’s help extended, and how one port is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

People are dying and Jaehyun needs to fix it.

Jaehyun storms into the room and finds Johnny doing his usual routing; pacing and muttering. He barely stops to look at Jaehyun, him and his unbridled anger. 

Jaehyun storms in and stops Johnny in his tracks, one hand on his chest and one on his cheek. 

“Johnny. Look at me.”

It isn’t a request.

“People are dying.” Jaehyun presents the fact and Johnny flinches slightly. “People are dying and we aren’t doing enough about it.” 

“Hyunwoo...” 

“No, baby.” 

Johnny looks broken at that. Jaehyun rarely disagrees with him. It hurts Jaehyun too

“Kun has the resources to help us now. Hyunwoo can’t help for another month, at least. How many more graves are we going to fill, Johnny? All he wants is a meeting. All he wants is one port.”

Jaehyun watches tears pool in Johnny’s eyes.

Johnny puts his hands over Jaehyun’s and breathes until he can get the words out. 

“I can’t. The people need to see a king who is unyielding, Jaehyun. My father wouldn’t have done it.” 

“We don’t have to be our parents.” 

“Jaehyun...”

“Johnny.” 

This is usually when Jaehyun resigns himself to Johnny’s stubbornness. When they go to bed and whisper sweet nothings and pretend they’re still kids. 

Not this time. 

“Johnny, is your pride really worth more than your people?”

“I’ll give him the port, Jaehyun. He just has to come here.” Johnny’s first year falls from his left eye. 

“He won’t come, Johnny. You know that already.” 

“Hyunwoo is coming.” 

“Johnny...” 

“I can’t!” Their closeness dissipates. Johnny steps away.

What’s left between them is a familiar rage. 

“It’s an insult, Jaehyun. The people want a leader not someone with a soft-heart. Kun comes here, we give him the port, my people see they have a real king. I won’t be insulted. I won’t ruin what my father built.”

Jaehyun is at his wits end. They’ve had this conversation a hundred times. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. 

Jaehyun steps back too. 

“Then let me go instead.”

And then what settles between them is a bewildered silence. Johnny stares at Jaehyun. A tree branch rattles against their window. 

“What did you say?” 

Jaehyun has put a lot of thought into this. 

“I said let me go instead. Kun doesn’t know you from me. I can be Johnny.”

Johnny processes those words for another expanse of time, arms folding across his chest and considers Jaehyun. He considers Jaehyun for the man he is now and who he had been all those years ago.

The idea is insane.

“No! That’s too dangerous. What if you get hurt?”

“I’d rather me get hurt than another hundred people die. I can’t keep coming in here begging you to change every night. I’m tired, Johnny”

They don’t sleep that night. 

Not between the tears of exhaustion, the whispers back and forth. “I don’t want to lose you.” 

“You won’t.”

Well-rehearsed.

\--

“What are you going to do when you get there?” 

“Write up a treaty that gives Kun one port and gets us the resources to make it through these disasters.” 

“And what else?” 

“Nothing else, Johnny. Just the treaty, save our people, and come back to you.”

\--

“It doesn’t fit you.” Donghyuck teases when he spots Jaehyun in Johnny’s crown. Little does he know that Jaehyun has worn it more times than Johnny. 

“It fits me just fine. You aren’t used to seeing it, is all.” 

“Good thing you’re pretty, Hyunnie.”

It’s a good thing Johnny was callous enough to send Yangyang away without meeting him. 

“You’re going to trip on the robe.” Donghyuck tries again, a couple days later when they’re trying to pack luggage. 

“You have so little faith in me.”

“That’s not it at all.”

“You’re beautiful.” Johnny whispers into the back of Jaehyun’s neck, helping with the last of his shirt buttons. 

“Because I’m wearing your clothes.” Jaehyun laughs, edges Johnny off of him. 

“That’s not it at all, baby.

\--

“How long?” 

“Fifteen days maximum. If things aren’t finished by then I come back and we recalculate.” 

Johnny doesn’t look happy with the answer, even though he’s the one that spoon fed it to Jaehyun two days ago. 

This is how things have been going.

Johnny is anxious about sending Jaehyun in his place. He can’t help but think of the dangers. No crown from Vislia has visited in over thirty years— the tensions have been high for fifty.

He can’t leave, though. If he stays behind the country will see him as the leader still.

And when Kun sends help, they will believe that Johnny negotiated without ever conceding. 

More importantly, the people would get the help they need. 

Jaehyun has gotten used to handshakes and the right angle for his bows, meeting people’s eyes.

He introduces himself as Johnny and it doesn’t sound like a lie. 

Johnny is in love with him and doesn’t want him to go. 

Fifteen days maximum and then Johnny will never let him out of his sight again.

“Stop looking at me like that.” Jaehyun rises in his toes and kisses the downturn of Johnny’s lips. “No one is stupid enough to kill the king. I’m safer as you than me.”

\--

They leave in the morning, when everything is brisk and dewy and they’re less likely to be followed.

Jaehyun is leaving with four men; Mark, Taeyong, Soonyoung, and, inexplicably, Jongin. 

Who would go had been a heated debate once the plans were settled.

Jaehyun didn’t really care who came with him. None of them were Johnny. None of them could be Donghyuck. And they weren’t Taeil either. 

Donghyuck’s parting gift was a few good natured taunts and a photo of himself. 

Taeil’s was sleeping medication and a prayer.

Johnny’s was a letter he made Jaehyun promise not to open until he missed him too much to bear. 

“That’s assuming I’ll miss you at all.” Jaehyun pockets the letter and thinks he’ll want to open it the first night. 

“I’ll miss you enough for both of us, then.”

Johnny could be a romantic when he wanted to. The men around them all mimed gagging and Johnny laughed it off then kissed the breath out of Jaehyun as payback. 

“Be safe.” Johnny says. It is not a request. 

“Don’t miss me too much.” Jaehyun counters.

Driving away is the hardest thing Jaehyun has ever willingly done. 

He and Johnny hadn’t spent a night apart since Johnny’s father passed away. They hadn’t spent more than a day apart since they were children. 

Jaehyun ached with that knowledge.

Then he chastised himself for such a selfish thought and remembered he was doing something good. He was helping save the country. 

Johnny would be there when he got back.

The journey to Rosvo is a quick one. When they cross the country line and nothing changes it serves as a reminder that one hundred years earlier they were one country. The terrain is the same, the air, no one immediately attacks them.

Jaehyun feels the smallest bit of anxiety slip away. Maybe Johnny exaggerated the danger here, an after effect of too much time with his father and his head in history books that only told one side of the story. 

Taeyong chatters happily.

Mark and Soonyoung keep their heads together strategizing. Jongin is silent, staring at the window like he’s waiting for something the rest of them can’t see. 

It’s a bit unnerving but Jaehyun understands. Jongin is older. He’s seen the war before.

“You’re going to do great, J.” Taeyong whispers encouragement when they get closer to the castle. He smooths down Jaehyun’s hair and makes sure the crown is sitting right. 

They’ve all taken to calling Jaehyun “J,” as a preventative measure.

Mostly because Jaehyun still wasn’t used to answering to Johnny. Like he wasn’t used to answering to Yoonoh before. Or answering to his own name when he was a child, rather than being called as his father’s son. 

Life was a series of repetitions.

Jaehyun just told himself coming back to Johnny was one of them.

The castle in Rosvo is not as grand as the one is Vislia, which isn’t surprising since Vislia was the true capital when they were one country. 

It still feels vast as the royal guards lead Jaehyun and his company through the endless hallways.

It feels like the first time Jaehyun met Johnny— nervous to lose the guards and get lost forever. 

Except this time Taeyong is reassurance to his right and Mark to his left and Soonyoung and Jongin are steady behind him.

Kun is nothing like Jaehyun expects. 

They enter the throne room and Kun is seated, head thrown back in laughter with the men at his side. He looks natural there and then stands when he notices Jaehyun has come in. 

He walks down to meet them all halfway.

His smile is friendly and genuine, dimples marking his cheeks like god knew this man would be powerful and needed something to make him look more friendly, more accessible.

He’s younger than Jaehyun imagined, only a hint of aging around his lips and forehead. Beautiful though.

“Johnny! I’m so glad we could finally convince you to come!” He talks to Jaehyun with complete ease, like they’re old friends. The handshake is a formality and Kun’s hands are warm. He’s human like the rest of them. 

“Thank you for your persistence.” Jaehyun laughs.

It’s so easy to talk to Kun. Jaehyun had been scared that Kun would sniff him out the first second, but he looks nothing but happy. They sit together for a while, introduce their men. 

Jaehyun meets Lucas who is nearly a head taller than Kun.

He’s the head of the royal guard, which makes sense considering the width of his shoulders, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, and how he stays standing. He has an infectious smile though. 

Ten, Lucas’s brother, is Kun’s right hand man. He’s a lot like Taeyong.

Pretty, sharp eyes, feels like he can see down to your core. He tells great jokes. His smiles don’t look genuine and Jaehyun thinks he might stay away from Ten.

He also briefly meets Yangyang who does smile with a lot of teeth and talks quickly in passing.

Aside from Lucas, they are all rather small in stature and not too scary at all. Jaehyun really wonders why Johnny had been so worried.

They’re told dinner will be served in two hours and then led to their rooms to prepare. Jaehyun waves to Taeyong and enters his room. Once the door closes he lets himself relax again, slips out of his regal posture and breathes. The first hurdle has been cleared.

No one caught their lie straight out. 

This was going to work.

Jaehyun knows Johnny wanted him to wait longer than a few hours to read his letter. But he’s curious and he’s starting to feel like they’re going to get this taken care of quickly. Kun is so easy to talk to. 

He decides to read the letter.

_ “My Jaehyun,  _

_ Has it really been ten years since you cut me down in the forest?  _

_ I can’t believe you used to be scared of Minho. Scared of Taemin. Scared of my mother… Now you’re leaving the country with my crown and doing what even I can’t.  _

_ Whenever you’re reading this (probably earlier than you should be) just know that I’m missing you. After this, we’ll figure things out. I don’t want to feel this way ever again. You haven’t even left yet and I can hardly function with the worry.  _

_ I keep trying to remember the last time I said I love you and I can’t. Has it really been ten years of us just inferring? I love you. And I’m sorry it took you leaving for me to tell you that plainly. Come back in one piece. I want to talk about the consort thing again. I want you forever.  _

_ Love,  _

_ Johnny” _

Jaehyun doesn’t realize he’s crying until there are tears on the page, bleeding the ink. 

He can’t remember either, the last time they said I love you. But he can remember waking up beside Johnny, when Johnny was stroking his hair and watching him sleep.

He can remember the last time they walked through the gardens and their last sweet kiss and watching Johnny’s figure get smaller as they drove away— the way it tugged at his chest. They’ve always loved each other. It feels so much bigger to read it. The solid proof.

Jaehyun is going back to Johnny in no less than fifteen days but he starts to write a reply, because it feels urgent to tell him now.

Taeyong interrupts Jaehyun a few minutes later, first with a soft knock and then by walking inside. 

“Hey, it’s time for dinner. Are you going to change?” 

Jaehyun shoves the letters under a book on the desk and whips around. Taeyong looks like he’s showered.

His clothes are fresh pressed and his hair is curled softly away from his face. Jaehyun feels his ears get hot. He knows he’s been crying. 

“I think... I can change.” 

Taeyong looks sympathetic and helps him get ready, quick and efficient, no need for discussion.

Dinner is a full affair. Unbeknownst to Jaehyun, Kun had actually invited the leaders from the surrounding countries. This first night there are two: Hyunwoo and Baekhyun. 

Jaehyun feels a fresh set of nerves settle in.

He knows Johnny had only communicated with these men via courier. But there’s a possibility they could tell. There’s always the possibility…

The good news is that Jaehyun arrived a little late after all his grooming. Hyunwoo was well into a third glass of whiskey and Baekhyun, flushed and giggling, seemed to have finished off a bottle of wine himself. 

Jaehyun is in awe of how carefree they are.

Kun is tinged pink too. All their men are intermingled. 

Jaehyun sees this for what it is: a celebration.

Jaehyun knows better than to drink when he’s pretending to be someone else. He watches everyone else celebrate, guards completely down. Jaehyun wonders if anyone else came with some much preparation.

Hyunwoo’s laugh is like a deep rumbling across the table from Jaehyun

Baekhyun is just loud, shouting stories down to his men and over to Jaehyun as well. It’s a warm atmosphere and at some point music starts playing. There’s dancing. There’s warbling that could be called singing. The alcohol is flowing.

Jaehyun makes friends with Hyunwoo and his right hand named Hoseok. They’re both bigger than Lucas but gentle when they clap hands on Jaehyun’s shoulders. 

Baekhyun is tailed by a man named Chanyeol and between them Jaehyun hardly gets a word in.

Later in the evening Jaehyun is entertaining Yangyang and Mark and he realizes Kun has slipped away, as well as Ten and Lucas. 

Probably nothing. 

This is a celebration. Kun is a nice man. There’s nothing to be suspicious of. Johnny told him to just sign the treaty.

Johnny told him not to trust Kun, too. 

Jaehyun, lulled by a false sense of confidence, slips from the banquet hall and decides to go searching for them.

Something curious about Kun is the way he has no guards around the castle either. Like he knows he’s safe. Like he’s not expecting an attack. 

It’s how Jaehyun manages to linger outside the half open door of a study that the three of them ducked into without being caught.

He knows he shouldn’t eavesdrop and more than likely they are just getting air from a party slowly getting more rambunctious. 

But then he hears it. 

“—after we kill him it’ll be easy.”

“Not that easy, Ten. It has to look natural. If people suspect the king has been murdered... it’ll be an uprising. If he dies of natural causes... all the more reason to unify.” 

Jaehyun can’t piece together what he’s hearing.

Kun, the same man from the throne room, seemed to be plotting a murder. And the more he listened, the more it sounded like they were plotting /his/.

Jaehyun realizes he needs to get out of here. He needs to get to Taeyong and Mark and Soonyoung and Jongin. They need to leave. They need to go to Johnny. It’s not war, it’s murder.

Jaehyun is making his way back to the party when he makes a wrong turn. He doesn’t recognize the paintings on the wall and he can’t quite hear the music or the sound of Baekhyun’s stories and Hyunwoo’s laughter. 

He should have paid more attention when he left.

He should have brought someone with him. 

It’s okay, he has time. They’re planning a murder but it’s going to be drawn out and subtle. Natural. Jaehyun just needs to get to Taeyong and get back home.

That’s all he’s thinking when he turns the corner and finds Ten standing in the middle of the walkway. Alone. Eyes piercing. 

“Hi, Jaehyun.” 

Fuck.

Jaehyun tries to not react. He can talk his way out of this. There’s no way Ten actually  _ knows _ . He must have heard the name in passing. He doesn’t know. 

Jaehyun laughs, a nervous puff of breath. “Johnny, you mean.” 

“No, that’s not what I mean at all.”

Ten moves closer. Jaehyun stays put. If he runs that’ll make everything worse. Johnny wouldn’t run. 

“I mean Jaehyun. As in ‘My Jaehyun, has it really been ten years...’” 

Jaehyun’s blood runs cold. The letters.

“How did you... that— those were private.” Jaehyun can’t think of anything else to say. If Ten read them then it was all laid out right there. Who Jaehyun was, what he was there to do. 

Ten wore a look that said he knew that.

“Well, the invitation to visit was for the king, not his lover.” 

“I guess killing his lover doesn’t have the same payoff.” Jaehyun tries to touch his sword, just for the reassurance he wasn’t standing there with nothing to his name. 

The sword is missing.

He took it off for dinner. Taeyong told him he wouldn’t need it. 

“Don’t be so dramatic, Jaehyun.” Jaehyun hates how Ten says his name. Like a swear. “You’ll make a great bargaining chip instead. Our plans are flexible.” 

Ten isn’t armed either. And he’s alone.

“You haven’t told anyone yet.” 

“Because I can handle you myself.” 

It happens quickly. Ten charges him and Jaehyun knows it’s not with intentions to kill, just to take him. Take him to Kun. Take him to his friends. Ruin everything. 

Jaehyun just needs them to think. Ten could be reasoned with.

Ten could be reasoned with; he just has to stop running towards Jaehyun. 

Jaehyun acts on instinct. Maybe it’s a little bit childish but he simply shoves Ten back. He’s just trying to buy time. 

But Ten is smaller than Jaehyun.

Ten must have miscalculated when he said he could handle Jaehyun. Ten is thrown completely off balance, a hard force backward, back against the opposite wall in the hallway. 

There’s a sickening crack when Ten hits the wall and then a thud when his body hits the floor.

Jaehyun feels panic clog his throat. He looks at Ten on the floor then the wall, where there’s a light mounted, wrought iron pieces decorating it elegantly. 

There’s a piece missing. 

Ten is silent on the floor.

When Jaehyun edges closer he can see the piece of wrought iron that was missing. It’s lodged in the back of Ten’s skull. 

There’s so much blood.

There’s so much blood and when Jaehyun reaches for Ten, his eyes are closed. He doesn’t make a sound when Jaehyun tries to roll him over, no protest, no curses, no breaths of pain. 

It occurs to Jaehyun then how quick death can be.

It occurs to him that he’s killed someone. Not just someone but Kun’s right hand man. Someone in on Johnny’s death plot. 

They have to leave. They have to leave before anyone sees, before anyone else gets hurt; before Kun can kill Johnny.

It’s too bad Jaehyun stays to say a prayer over Ten’s body. 

“What are you doing?!” A voice roars from the end of the hallway. 

Lucas.

Somehow Lucas looks bigger than Jaehyun remembered. 

Lucas who was also planning to kill Johnny and now had cause. Because Ten is dead at Jaehyun’s feet and Jaehyun’s hands are covered in blood. 

“Lucas! It’s not—“ 

“Is he dead?!”

Lucas has not forgotten his sword. The only time Jaehyun had heard a sword pulled from its sheath was when he was playing with Johnny. When he was a kid and nothing was really at stake except for skinned palms. 

Lucas has the tip of his sword pressed to Jaehyun’s chest.

“You killed him?” 

“No! No! It was an accident. He was running, he fell. He—“ 

Jaehyun has never felt his heart beat so fast. He’s not going to die here. Johnny told him to make it back safe. Jaehyun promised him. 

“Ten doesn’t run. Why was he running?”

The tip of the sword is sharp, Jaehyun can feel the threat of it through the fabric of his shirt. He’s crying again. He thinks if Johnny was here, Johnny wouldn’t be crying. 

“I don’t know, Lucas, I swear. It was an accident. I just needed a second.” 

It slips out like that.

Seemingly innocuous. And maybe in any other situation it would have passed. 

Jaehyun can see Lucas register to comment, the tears, the blood, Ten dead on the floor. They want Johnny dead anyways. 

“A life for a life.” Is all Lucas says in return.

Jaehyun’s world explodes in pain he’s never felt before. 

He wraps his hands around the sword in an attempt to make it stop, to turn back time. His palms are cut deep, he hardly registers that though. 

Lucas doesn’t even flinch.

That’s when Jaehyun realizes that dying isn’t always quick. 

Sometimes dying is falling on your knees in a castle that isn’t your home, bleeding through a shirt that isn’t your own, and wishing you told someone you loved them.

Lucas pulls his sword back. He says something to Jaehyun but the words come through white noise. Jaehyun doesn’t know anything except the burn of pain and regret. 

At some point he falls to the ground too.

Death isn’t quick for him. 

He has enough time to say a prayer to the gods— to ask them to take his life for Johnny’s. He came here instead of Johnny. Now Johnny can live. Everyone can live.

At some point his eyes shut. He’s thankful for that. The last thing he sees isn’t really Lucas or the castle. It’s a vision of Johnny, teasing him for crying when they reached the end of a book together. 

Then peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you if you made it this far. And I'm sorry.
> 
> Also I want to be clear here that Jaehyun is actually dead. The narrative didn’t stop here as a cliffhanger, he just died so there’s no more of his perspective to give :/ if you want to keep up with this story in real time, I do post it in tidbits on Twitter first and then ao3 afterwards. You can find me on twt @suhjpeg 
> 
> Once again. Very very sorry.


	4. The end

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometime there is loss, sometimes there is destruction.

Johnny knew he wouldn’t thrive in Jaehyun’s absence. He didn’t want to say that outloud, though, mostly because it would validate a lot of his mother’s criticism. She always told him that loving Jaehyun was making him weak. 

Loving Jaehyun was making him love everything else that much more. 

In Jaehyun’s absence Johnny found himself walking the gardens much more often. He never really cared for plants until Jaehyun did. Taeil welcomed Johnny and let him help pull weeds on the first afternoon-- he made jokes about the king stooping to such menial work. Johnny just laughed. He felt closer to Jaehyun here. 

The days were mostly okay, though. Taeil served a good distraction and so did Donghyuck. He and Johnny spent their time strategizing, what to do with the coming supplies, when to start rolling out the re-housing initiative, what cities they should focus on rebuilding first. 

Nights were hard, though. Johnny didn’t realize how big his bed was until he wasn’t sharing it. 

He stopped sleeping alone back with Taemin, in a mattress that barely fit him and Jaehyun. This bed was large even for two of them. 

It’s no surprise that Johnny takes his blankets and moves to the couch. 

“As sickening as the two of you are together, I’d prefer that over your permanent puppy dog eyes.” Donghyuck says over breakfast. Johnny glares and flicks syrup in his direction. 

It was good, though. His teasing and work and the garden. Distractions that kept Johnny from getting too consumed with worry. 

He didn’t know what to expect from Kun. Taeyong said Kun seemed nice enough when they met, that he was friendly and only concerned with making amends. It didn’t feel genuine, though, with the way he refused to come to Johnny’s territory instead. 

Johnny just hopes Taeyong was right and he’s just overreacting. He knows Jaehyun can take care of himself. Jaehyun got him to the ground the first time they met, when they were just kids. Jaehyun didn’t like to get physical if he didn’t have to, but he could if need be. 

Johnny is settling into this routine of throwing himself into things that need to be taken care of and getting used to the lingering pang of missing Jaehyun. Which is why he’s surprised when it’s only been three days and Taeil rushes into the conference room, with red cheeks and chest puffing. 

“They’re coming back!”

Johnny and Donghyuck both looked up from the work they were doing. Johnny felt his heart rate spike. There wasn’t anyone else Taeil could be talking about: “Jaehyun?” 

“Yeah! Well, I would assume. The bridge guards just told me they saw our flags.” 

Johnny stands up with a sudden burst of energy. It’s been three days. Johnny can’t imagine that’s good news-- Is three days enough time to sign a treaty? To do a proper welcoming and sendoff? 

“There’s more.” Taeil puffs. 

Johnny gestures for him to continue, already settling into his usual pace.

“Kun’s sent men with them. The Rosvo flags are flying too.” 

Donghyuck is the first to jump into action. He grabs Johnny and tugs him off towards his chambers. Taeil trails behind, he’s saying something about orders to give the men but Johnny can’t hear it. His thoughts are all disordered, he’s just thinking about Jaehyun coming home. 

Donghyuck seems to slip into place, he tells Taeil what to do and then shoves Johnny into his closet, urges him to change and grab his cloak. “And your sword, too. We haven’t planned for Kun meeting you, your highness.”

Another level to the panic. Kun met Jaehyun and thought he was the king-- for whatever reason he’s here and Johnny is the king. They can’t both be king. 

They can’t both be king. Johnny is barely even considering that point, though. He’s just thinking about Jaehyun coming home, Jaehyun safe. Taeil mentioned it didn’t look like Kun was bringing too many people with him. Even if he doesn’t know about the trick, he’s outnumbered. 

“Taeyong says he’s nice,” Donghyuck murmurs, buttoning Johnny’s shirt. “Maybe Jaehyun explained things. Maybe Kun really did just want peace.” 

Johnny refuses to be so idealistic, he can’t drop his guard until he knows everyone is safe. 

They go to the palace steps together, Donghyuck to his left where Taeyong would usually stand. The courtyard slowly filled with soldiers, standing down but swords at their hips. 

Minho breaks the ranks and joins Johnny on the stairs. 

“I heard they were coming back. Do we know what’s happening?” He must have been on the training pitch. It’s not often he’s the last to know things. 

“We don’t know yet.” Johnny wills his voice calm. 

“Why all the soldiers?” 

“Kun is coming with them.”

Minho says nothing else. He moves to Johnny’s right. 

Johnny’s heart is pounding and time moves exactly opposite the cadence. They hear the procession before they see them. 

The first through are the guards that were sent off with Jaehyun, they don’t carry their weapons with them. It’s the first indication Johnny has that something is wrong-- his men never move without their weapons. 

When they move into the courtyard, they part. Next come Taeyong, Soonyoung, Jongin, and Mark. Taeyong, Soonyoung, Jongin, and Mark. Taeyong, Soonyoung, Jongin, and Mark. 

Where is Jaehyun? 

Taeyong’s eyes are red rimmed, his face is puffy, and he advances quickly to Johnny. He throws himself to the ground at Johnny’s feet and speaks in hard to distinguish sobs. 

“Johnny, I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t know what to do, there was nothing we could do--” 

“Taeyong?” Johnny goes to crouch, help him up, ask him where Jaehyun is. It is the second indication that something is very wrong. 

Taeyong doesn’t get the chance to speak again. More men file into the yard, these ones armed, and at the front a man in a crown. 

This must be Kun. 

“I believe we discussed this already, Taeyong.” He says evenly. His voice is even, it rings across the courtyard. No one moves for a moment, it’s just the sound of Taeyong sobbing. 

“And who are you to talk to my men like that?” Johnny forgets he might not be king in this man’s eyes. He doesn’t care. 

Kun looks at Johnny, fire in his gaze, and then his eyes briefly glance to Johnny’s left. He looks confused. 

“Who are you to speak to a king like that? The only king in this land now, I might add.”   
Johnny doesn’t know what that means. But it is the third indicator that something has gone terribly wrong. 

Johnny doesn’t know what to say and doesn’t really get the chance to. From behind Kun come four men carrying a casket. 

Johnny’s heart plummets in his chest. He does one final count: Taeyong, Soonyoung, Jongin, and Mark. No Jaehyun. 

The men place the casket at Johnny’s feet. He doesn’t think his heart is beating at all.

Kun moves to the head of the casket and Johnny watches in abject horror as he raises the lid. 

There is Jaehyun. 

Throughout their lives, they had shared frozen moments countless times. Time freezes once again between. 

Johnny can barely comprehend what’s before him. Jaehyun’s eyes are closed, his face is the same unblemished beauty Johnny said goodbye to three days earlier. His arms are by his side, unmoving-- he liked to sleep like that. He could be sleeping. 

Johnny feels that excuse building in the back of his head and something close to a wail building in his chest. That’s Jaehyun; beautiful, big-hearted, love of his life. Dead. 

And Kun is standing there with a cruel smile on his face. 

“Your king is dead.” 

There’s something strange about the way Kun doesn’t look at Johnny and instead looks at Minho. Johnny was at the center, Minho wasn’t even in his general attire. 

Johnny’s thoughts race again. He needs to deal with this, he needs to take care of Jaehyun, he needs to talk to Taeyong. 

But first. Before anything else. 

He draws his sword. 

“You’re mistaken. I’m the king.” 

Kun readies himself to rebuttal but Johnny doesn’t allow it. He roars over a slowly building chaos: “Seize them!”

Kun is outnumbered at least four to one. Him and his men are taken easily. 

Johnny barely registers it. He’s on his knees beside the casket. 

For a while everything feels like it’s underwater. 

Johnny stays on the steps, crouched at Jaehyun’s side and clutching to his lifeless hand. Hours have to pass but he barely feels them. He knows people have come to speak to him, he hears the words— he doesn’t recognize them.

At some point someone, he thinks Minho, tries to pull him to his feet. He thrashes violently against the touch, insists on staying put. 

The first words that don’t sound foggy are someone saying they could move Jaehyun inside. There’s a storm coming.

That makes sense to Johnny. He doesn’t really feel himself speaking, he doesn’t hear himself either. Regardless, men come to move Jaehyun and someone else moves Johnny. 

He feels fuzzy. He can’t remember if he’s been crying or not. His throat feels raw. His hands are sore.

When he tries to focus on himself and his surroundings again there are two people with him. Donghyuck on one side, Taeil on the other. They’re speaking, to him or to each other, Johnny has no idea. 

Everything still sounds foreign. It still feels fake.

He doesn’t know where they’re going or if they’ve gotten there. Life comes to him in segments and he almost feels inclined to rejoin until he remembers. The casket. Jaehyun. Dead. 

He thinks he hears them say they’re going to change his clothes.

He thinks they offer to stay with him. He thinks they give him water. He can’t remember though. 

Everything is just there and gone. There and gone. There and (jaehyunsdeadjaehyunsdeadjaehyunsdead) gone. Johnny doesn’t want them to stay. He wants to sleep with Jaehyun.

Maybe he said that out loud.

Taeil and Donghyuck eventually leave him. He’s not in his own room, there is no Jaehyun to be found. He’s alone. He lays down and the pain of that consumes him. His brain cycles through the idea that Jaehyun is coming back and the fact that he isn’t.

Constant ricochet. 

It hurts. 

Eventually he sleeps. It’s in fitful stops and starts that all feel like nightmares. He can’t stop wondering when Jaehyun died? How long had he been continuing as normal without knowing his other half was missing? How did he not notice?

How can he continue on without him?

Eventually someone comes to wake him up. The time is still blurring. It’s Minho again. 

“Hey, bud.” He sits at Johnny’s side and combs fingers through his hair. Johnny doesn’t bristle at the contact this time, he allows it, the ghost of comfort. “You have to get up.”

Johnny doesn’t want to get up. Something about it feels very Sunday mornings when he was a child, before Jaehyun would have to leave, before Johnny would have to go pray to gods that obviously weren’t listening. At least now he knows he’s crying.

“He’s gone.” Johnny croaks. 

“I know he is.” Minho’s voice is thin too. Johny can’t bring himself to look. Minho loved Jaehyun, too. So many people did. 

This pain is worse than his father. There was no warning. Just his own ego and a mistake.

“What do I even do next?” 

“Keep going.” 

Johnny wheezes a laugh, wet and broken. Keep going. “How do I live with a heart?” 

“You just do.” 

It's as simple as that. Almost like Jaehyun had said to him before he was king. It stings. 

Johnny doesn’t think he can get out of bed.

-

Johnny gets out of bed. 

He still feels somewhat outside of every situation. He feels himself talking and moving, but remembers none of it, doesn’t consciously make any decisions. He’s going through the motions. There’s still a country to run.

There’s still a king in his prison. There’s still spilled blood to be accounted for. 

He knows he has to talk to Taeyong. He’s been avoiding it by speaking with nameless guards and other parties, people who weren’t grieving. People who wouldn’t ask Johnny how he was doing.

Taeyong is crying when Johnny finds him in the garden. Johny wonders if any of them will ever stop. 

“Johnny, I’m so sorry.” He says, rushing into Johnny’s arms. There’s no one around and no need to hold up pretenses. 

“It’s not your fault.” Johnny hears himself say.

He doesn’t actually know that, though. No one has told him what happened. 

“Can you tell me what happened?” He feels brave enough to ask eventually. 

“I really don’t know much.” Taeyong leads him back to a bench. They sit together and hold their composure.

“There was a party. We didn’t even know Jaehyun left. Just that one minute we were all laughing and the next, Kun and Lucas come roaring into the room and send everyone away.” 

He pauses to take a shaky breath. Johnny offers his hand as encouragement.

“Everyone except us. When we were alone, their guards came in. Kun said Johnny was dead... that he killed someone. And, I mean, I’m sorry it was kind of a blur for a bit. I didn’t know if he was lying or if we were about to be killed or what... just. They took us.”

Taeyong squeezes Johnny’s hand. He looks like he’s fighting another round of tears. 

“He said the king was dead. They... Johnny, they left his body with us in the prison.” Then he’s really crying, the rest of the story collapsed under his sobs. 

Johnny aches for him.

He cries too.

Some time between the garden and the next meeting with his council Johnny’s molten sadness hardens to volcanic rock. 

Somehow he manages to table Jaehyun’s death as a simple fact. A fact that needed a rebuttal. A fact that needs retribution.

The chair to Johnny’s right is empty. Sometimes Donghyuck would sit there if Jaehyun decided not to join them for a meeting. Today the chair is not empty by choice. The faces around the table are varying degrees distressed and unflinching.

Jongin’s eyes wear the pain his lips won’t concede to. Donghyuck is still stuttering breaths close to Taeyong’s side. Johnny wonders how many days he was lost in the fog and what exactly he’s come out to. 

It’s silent.

Johnny refuses to say a word about Jaehyun’s death. For the time being, it’s a simple fact that can be dealt with. Nothing more. 

Instead, he says: “There has been an act of war committed on our country.” 

Everyone straightens like they weren’t expecting it.

“Personally, I would like to handle this matter by quartering king Qian and sending a limb to each of our neighbors.” Unsettled murmurs cross the table, Johnny lifts a hand to halt them. “Obviously we won’t be so dramatic.” 

Mark looks at him like it’s not all that obvious.

“But it still stands they killed one of ours and came with intentions to take... my throne. Something needs to be done.”

Everyone seems to agree but no one brings up an idea of what exactly to do. In all the years of unrest between Rosvo and Vislia, it never got to this point.

Surprisingly, Mark speaks first. “I’ve been to see them. They won’t budge on who did it.”

Johnny laughs, a harsh and ugly sound. “Did you think it would be that easy?” 

Mark blushes a hot red and ducks his head. 

“No, of course it won’t be that easy.”

Johnny stands from his seat. The solution didn’t really need a meeting. They all knew they needed to find the culprit and kill them to set an example. Fair’s fair. 

And if Kun didn’t want to speak, then Johnny figured he could think of a way to convince him.

Usually Johnny doesn’t keep a sword with him. He’s never felt unsafe in his home, he’s never had reason to. What he does keep with him is a dagger, gifted to him by Yuta the first week he was living with Taemin. It’s nothing extravagant, but it fits perfectly in Johnny’s boot.

He keeps it with him more as a memento than anything else. Today, he thinks he’ll put it to use (fitting the last time he pulled it out was cut a flower at Jaehyun’s insistence). 

It seems everyone has chosen to give Johnny space when he storms from the room.

Everyone except Donghyuck and Mark, who chase after Johnny on either side and speak so quickly he can barely make out the words. At least this time it’s not like his ears are filled with cotton. The gist is they think Johnny should let them talk to Kun instead.

Johnny shakes them off with more cruel laughter and longer legs. 

“Leave it be, boys. I’m the king. They have much more reason to speak to me.” 

Johnny thinks he hears Mark tell Donghyuck to go back. When Johnny makes his way into the holding cells, it’s only Mark behind him.

He enters to a low murmur of talking. Kun’s arrogance had him bring less than thirty men. They all fit across four cells. 

They don’t look too put out. Yes they’re sat along the ground and sharing bedrolls, but they’re still talking, still laughing. 

That won’t do.

Kun and Lucas are together in their own cell, on the far side of the room. They don’t look upset. Kun is on the bed, feet up like he’s on holiday. Lucas is doing exercises. 

Johnny is somewhat thankful for it, because the rage blinds out the pain for a moment.

Kun grins when he sees Johnny. Johnny is hanging on by a thread. 

“Who did it?” He demands through the iron bars that separate them. Kun keeps grinning. 

“Is that really how you speak to someone when you want something from them?”

“Is that how you speak to someone who has your life in their hands?” Johnny grits. 

Kun must have been born to be king. He isn’t shaken in the slightest, not at the threat or the cage or the fact none of them have been fed since they were put down here. Infuriatingly serene.

A real leader. 

Johnny wants to kill him. 

Johnny wants to kill all of them.

“All you have in your hands is your own anger, John. Is it really me you’re upset with?” Kun stands and moves so he can be in front of Johnny. Almost, but not quite close enough.

“See I’ve had some time to think this over and I’ve heard some things in passing and I think I understand how he— Jaehyun, was it?” 

“Don’t say his name.” Johnny’s hand flexes, he knows where his weapon is. 

Kun smiles again.

“I think I understand how he ended up in my court. You didn’t want to come, John. But you still needed my help. What a predicament.” 

He’s enjoying the song and dance. 

“So he came instead. I’m sure he wanted the help. I saw his hands, John. He wasn’t a king.”

Johnny pauses on that. He spent so much of his life looking at his own hands, he never thought about Jaehyun’s. They were soft when Johnny held them, cold in the winter, hot in the summer, a perfect fit for his own. But were they too soft? Too unblemished? Had Kun known?

“And you’re angry with me because it’s easier than admitting your own fault. Just think, it could’ve been you.” Kun continues on. 

It’s lucky Mark knows Johnny so well. He’s there to grab Johnny’s arm before he makes a mistake. Kun committed an act of war by killing Jaehyun.

Johnny wasn’t ready to actually declare one by killing Kun. Not yet, anyways. 

“Who did it?” Johnny manages to ask instead, bypasses the anger momentarily. Kun could play all night, he was still technically at Johnny’s mercy. 

“It was a party, John. So many people there.”

It’s unfair, really, how someone can be so cruel. Johnny tried to take after his father, rule kindly but unyielding. If Kun wanted someone cruel, Johnny would happily oblige. 

Kun looks like he won. Mark has let Johnny’s arm go.

In the next cell over the men have come closer to the action, one has his back turned, leaned against the bars and listening. Like hearing about Jaehyun’s death was a casual story. It’s crime enough for Johnny. 

He moves quickly.

The smile slowly slides off Kun’s face as he watches Johnny take his dagger, reach through the bars, and cut the soldier’s throat. 

There’s chaos from all corners of the room then; Johnny’s own guards coming to investigate, Mark trying to pull Johnny away.

The soldier chokes on his own blood. The men around him run to help and shy away from the mess in equal measures. 

Johnny looks at Kun, his turn to smile. 

“You don’t have to tell me, Kun. Eventually they’ll all bleed to death or starve. Your choice.”

\-   
Johnny kneels beside Jaehyun in their bed. He’s been kneeling for at least an hour, warming Jaehyun’s palm between his hands and staring at his unmoving face. He could be sleeping. 

Maybe it was fate playing a joke, the fact that Jaehyun’s face looked so unblemished.

There was nothing to say he couldn’t be sleeping, unless you looked close enough to see his chest wasn’t moving. Johnny just didn’t look close enough. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, lips brushing over the back of Jaehyun’s wrist. It’s what he does, sits and admires and apologizes.

“Johnny?” It’s not Jaehyun’s voice and Johnny is almost inclined to snap at whoever interrupted him. 

He looks up and it’s Taeyong. He holds his tongue. 

“Johnny.” Taeyong says again, rounding the bed and kneeling by his side. Taeyong is the only person brave enough to do this.

“Johnny, you have to let him go.” Taeyong is gentle, a hand combing through Johnny’s hair, trying to coax him out of his misery and back with the living. Johnny doesn’t move. He strongly considers not replying at all. 

And then: “Taemin is coming. He can fix this.”

Taeyong sighs. It’s the same thing Johnny has said when anyone asked about a burial. This is all Johnny does, torment Kun and his men, then come to his room and pray for a soul to be returned that has long departed. Everyone knows Taemin can’t fix this.

Everyone except Johnny. 

“Johnny, he’s gone.” Taeyong says carefully, staying closer than anyone else would have dared to. In the past few days, he has been more violent and volatile than anyone had ever seen him. He even snapped at Donghyuck, raised a knife at Mark.

“He’s not gone!” Johnny roars, standing and finally letting Jaehyun’s hand go. “He’s resting, but he’s not gone, Yong. He can’t be gone. If he’s gone... if he’s gone...” Johnny’s words dissolve into incoherent rambling. He’s crying again and Taeyong tries to offer some comfort.

His embrace will never be enough, though. No one’s will. 

“Johnny, denying it won’t change it.” Taeyong whispers. “We need to plan a burial.” 

Johnny is quick to push Taeyong away. “Is that what you think is best, Taeyong? Trap him underground? He won’t be able to get out.”

Taeyong watches the panic rise in Johnny’s eyes. 

“He won’t be able to get out. He won’t be able to find me. Taemin... Can fix it.” He says it all then looks back at Taeyong and points a threatening finger. “Get out.” 

Even Taeyong isn’t brave enough to overstay.

\-   
Taeyong has been having trouble sleeping. Most of the castle has (a dead body will do that). 

He tosses and turns, counts sheep, makes up stories, and does everything he can to stop thinking about Jaehyun. 

Which, of course, means the second he falls asleep he sees Jaehyun.

They’re in a field that Taeyong doesn’t recognize. Jaehyun looks like he did the night he died, wearing Johnny’s clothes and the mask of his confidence. 

“Yong.” Jaehyun says, advancing towards him. Taeyong feels like he’s floating, but when Jaehyun hugs him it feels real.

“Jaehyun,” Taeyong breathes in, he can smell Jaehyun’s perfume. 

“You have to get him to sleep, Taeyong. I can’t help if he doesn’t sleep.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean I’m here. I’m stuck here until he lets me go.” It sounds like he’s crying. Taeyong aches.

“He won’t let you go.” 

“That’s why I need him to sleep, Taeyong. Just one night.” 

“You won’t like who he’s become.” 

“I’ve seen it already. I love him regardless.” 

“He’s not going to sleep.” 

“He will, Taeyong. You can convince him.” 

His voice is getting fainter.

His touch is getting fainter. Taeyong tries to hold tighter but he’s clutching air. There’s nothing left but the field he doesn’t recognize and Jaehyun’s voice. 

“You couldn’t have changed anything, Yong. It was fate.” 

And then Taeyong wakes up, covered in sweat and panting.  
-  
“Clearly you don’t care about the men you brought with you.” Johnny snarls, blood on his hands and a body at his feet. 

Kun is wearing the same mask of indifference. He insists he doesn’t know who did it, tells Johnny he can run them all through.

It’s clear he thinks Johnny will stop at him. 

The soldiers have tried bargaining though. They point fingers at each other but whenever Johnny asks /why/ they did it, they can never convince him. At this point Johnny’s almost certain he knows who did it.

He just thinks they all deserve to suffer. 

“It’s okay, Kun. These men pledged their loyalty to you, they knew that joining you could get them killed, they accepted that.” 

There are noises of a struggle from the hall behind Johnny and he grins in a mirror of Kun’s expression.

“But what if I was suspicious of someone who isn’t in your army?” 

The noise raises, and there’s a familiar voice rising about the scuffle. Kun’s expression slips and Johnny thinks he’s got him. 

“What if your messenger just happened to catch sight of me?”

Yangyang is brought into the room between two guards with steel expressions. 

Chaos erupts. 

“Don’t touch him!” It’s not Kun that says it, but Lucas. He lunges at the bars and bares his teeth. Hook, line, sinker. 

“Why shouldn’t I? I’ve been doing some thinking too.

“And I’ve been thinking that you weren’t upset because I didn’t have the culprit.” Johnny takes Yangyang with a hand around his throat. Clearly Yangyang knows that Johnny is more dangerous to him than the guards. He doesn’t struggle. 

“But now I do.”

Lucas makes another noise, rattles the door on his cell and then looks at Kun, shocked by the king’s complete indifference. It’s almost enough to make Johnny abandon his plan, the way Kun still doesn’t move. But Lucas isn’t as collected. 

“I DID IT!” He shouts.

As much a surprise to Johnny as every other man in the room, Kun included. 

“He killed Ten. He deserved to die.” 

Johnny doesn’t know who Ten is, but he knows a real confession when he hears one. He drops Yangyang quickly, instructs the guards to take him out.

“Who are you to make that decision?” Johnny sneers.

“Aren’t you doing the same thing?” 

It’s enough for one day. Johnny retreats. He has his answer. He knows who is next.

-

Donghyuck has been sleeping in Taeil’s room, since Johnny started changing. He’s unsettled, has been since Johnny turned a look on him that was equal parts unbridled rage and completely absent. There’s a corpse in the bedroom and a zombie in the halls. 

Taeil doesn’t mind.

He’s upset too. Even the garden is wilting.

Donghyuck sleeps easier when he manages to get to bed before Taeil has turned the lights out. Tonight Taeil reads an excerpt from his book out loud and Donghyuck is able to drift off. It’s a light sleep, but it’s okay.

It’s okay because he sees Jaehyun when he sleeps. It’s no different tonight. 

They’re in the garden and the flowers are alive. Jaehyun points out different ones to Donghyuck. At some point he turns away from the flowers and looks at Donghyuck, less like a specter.

“Hyuck, you have to get Johnny to bury me.” 

Donghyuck is confused. Usually in his dreams they don’t say much to each other, and Jaehyun has never acknowledged his death. 

“He’s not going to.” 

“Then can you get him to sleep?”

“I’m sorry, Jaehyun, but I’m not going anywhere near him. He’s not our Johnny anymore.” 

Something crosses Jaehyun’s eyes, like a veil lifted for the briefest second. He reaches out and squeezes Donghyuck’s shoulder. 

“He is our Johnny, Hyuck. This is always who he was meant to be.” 

Donghyuck is confused by that. He frowns and looks at Jaehyun’s hand, he can feel the weight of it. Then it’s gone, and with it Jaehyun and the garden.

\-   
Taeil never sleeps until Donghyuck does. Sometimes it’s a struggle, because Donghyuck is still full of energy even with Johnny weighing them down. Taeil has tried to distract Hyuck, keep him from hearing exactly what Johnny’s been doing. It’s hard, though. People talk.

Usually his sleep is uninterrupted and dreamless. 

Tonight he’s in a long corridor in the castle, seemingly stretching for miles on end. He can only look straight ahead, but in his peripherals he sees a shape on the floor, unmoving. 

He’s scared.

He’s convinced it’s a nightmare until Jaehyun appears. And maybe that makes it worse, because there’s blood on Jaehyun’s face and he looks scared, too. 

“Taeil, please. I can’t keep reliving this.” Jaehyun begs, kneeling at Taeil’s feet and sobbing. 

“Jaehyun, I’m sorry.”

It’s all Taeil can say. He is sorry. And he’s scared. And he doesn’t want to imagine Jaehyun like this. 

“Taeil, please, please bury me. Make Johnny see me, make him let me go. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t...” 

It’s not a long dream. Taeil wakes up in a panic.

Donghyuck is still asleep beside him and there’s no trace of Jaehyun in sight. 

He doesn’t get back to sleep that night.

-  
Mark can’t sleep most nights. 

He’s weighed down with guilt. Every day in the castle gets worse, every day Johnny slips further away. Every day another person dies and Mark can only think that if he had just gone with Jaehyun, things would be different.

But sometimes. Sometimes he sleeps. 

He’s scared to do it, because he sees Jaehyun in his dreams. Usually his corpse, and Kun sneering over it, telling Mark that he and Taeyong will carry it. 

It’s as brutal and terrifying as it was in real life.

Tonight there’s nothing Terrifying waiting for Mark. It’s a lake he used to visit when he was a kid and Jaehyun, sitting with his feet in the water. 

“Sit with me, Mark?” 

Mark sits. 

“It’s not your fault, you know?” 

“What if you hadn’t been alone, though?”

“Mark, you’re just one man. You can’t take responsibility for something that’s been writing itself before any of us were even born.” Jaehyun feels warm beside him, it’s comforting even if it’s just a dream. 

“All of you and your talk about destiny. I saw you walk out.” Mark looks at his lap. “I saw you walk out and I thought I should go with you. Everyone had been drinking and you were being Johnny and you shouldn’t have been alone but I let you go.” 

Jaehyun reaches and takes Mark’s hand. “Mark, you can’t blame yourself.”

“I can though. It’s my fault. I /saw you/.” 

“Mark,” Jaehyun takes his face in his hand and pulls it so they’re facing each other. “I don’t blame you. So stop blaming yourself.” 

“You’re just a figment of my imagination trying to get me to forgive myself.”

“You know that’s not true, you’ve been dreaming of me dead for weeks. Mark, you need to listen to me. I don’t blame you. All I want is you to forgive yourself. And for Johnny to let me go.” 

Mark frowns. He wouldn’t dream this up.

“Johnny’s not ready.” 

“Make him sleep, then. Mark, I can’t keep watching you all go through this. I’m being selfish. I want you to forgive yourself and I want to rest.” 

“Johnny’s not ready.” Is all Mark can say again. 

“Tell him /I/ am.”

Mark doesn’t think Johnny would listen to anyone. 

“We can make a deal. You get me in the ground and I’ll forgive you for letting me go alone.” 

“That’s not fair.” 

Jaehyun let’s go of Mark’s hand. “Life isn’t fair.”

Mark wakes up in the garden, confused and heartbroken. He knows that it was Jaehyun, he knows Jaehyun still can’t rest.

-  
“You know, killing him isn’t going to bring Jaehyun back.” Mark is being brave today. Taeyong tried it, Taeil tried it, even Jongin tried it. Johnny has his sword in his hand and he doesn’t care what Mark says. 

“Taemin is going to bring him back.” Johnny says.

“Johnny, look at him.” Mark takes the sword from Johnny’s hands and gestures towards Jaehyun’s body. The smell in the room is overbearing and Mark feels really, really brave for being there. “He’s gone.” 

“He’s not gone.”

Johnny isn’t listening and Mark is running out of ways to be gentle. 

“He’s decomposing, Johnny. You keep him in here long enough and all that’ll be left is maggots and bones. Is that what you want? Is that how you want to remember him?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Johnny sneers, taking his sword back from Mark’s hands and exiting the room. Mark follows quickly, mostly because he doesn’t like being alone with the corpse. There’s almost nothing recognizable about Jaehyun left.

No one is able to stop Johnny on his warpath to Lucas. The whole thing is entirely too dramatic and over so quickly. 

Johnny enters the cells again, all the men come to the center to watch.

He marches directly to where Kun and Lucas are standing, has the guards open the door, and doesn’t give Lucas a chance to speak before he does exactly what Lucas did to Jaehyun. The sword runs straight through his heart and the pain registers instantly.

Kun moves to the far corner of the cell but otherwise makes no reaction. Lucas falls to his knees, Johnny doesn’t hear anything. His ears are ringing— not that Lucas is making any apologies. He dies slowly and Johnny stays over him until it’s done.

It’s gruesome, but Mark takes a breath. Everyone in the room takes a breath. They think it’s over.

-

It’s not over.

It’s not over and now the castle has two dead bodies; one in Johnny’s room and one in the courtyard. 

Johnny doesn’t do much except stand with Jaehyun’s body and then stand with Lucas’s. He keeps saying it’s a reminder, that people should know what happens if they defy him.

It makes Mark sick. Taeyong takes leave. Taeil stays in the gardens. Everyone has given up on Johnny at this point. 

Jaehyun keeps showing up in their dreams. They talk about it with each other and try to reason with Johnny but he doesn’t listen. He won’t listen

If he would just rest he could see Jaehyun. He would /know/. But he drives himself into the ground and then blacks out, no dreams. No rest. No peace. 

Mark tries to talk to the queen but she’s in just as bad shape. 

“He’s gone.” She keeps saying. And Mark knows what she means.

Johnny isn’t dead, but he’ll never be Johnny again. It was like all the best parts of him were on loan from Jaehyun and with Jaehyun... gone... Johnny lost it all. He was just a shell— fueled by his grief and anger. Mark felt the guilt crawl up his throat.

He made a promise to Jaehyun and he wanted to follow through. 

“Johnny,” Mark is careful when he walks into Johnny’s study. He spends more time there than his room now, he can see Lucas’s body. 

“Something wrong, Mark?” 

There’s a lot wrong.

“Johnny, why aren’t you burying Lucas?” 

“Because he doesn’t deserve to rest.” 

Mark steps closer and puts a tentative hand on Johnny’s shoulder. 

“Why aren’t you burying Jaehyun?” 

“Because he’s not...” 

Even Johnny can’t finish the lie anymore.

It’s been just under a week and finally, it looks like it’s settling in. Johnny collapses into his chair. He looks so tired. 

“You know what you have to do.” Mark tidies some of the mess on Johnny’s desk. “There are too many ghosts around here.”

“I never told him, Mark. Not even one time...” 

Mark remembers, then, what he brought with him. Something he managed to grab when they were leaving Kun’s castle to come home, something that was among Jaehyun’s things. 

“He knew! You wrote him that letter.”

Mark grabs a carefully folded paper from his chest pocket and places it on the table. “He was writing one back. It’s not finished or anything but, maybe it’ll bring you some comfort. You need to make peace with this. We all do.”

Mark leaves the room after that.

Johnny looks at the paper. It’s addressed to him in Jaehyun’s handwriting. His hands shake when he opens it. It’s clear that Jaehyun has been interrupted while writing and Johnny struggles to read it through a fresh well of tears.

_My Johnny,_

_Is it old age that’s made you so sentimental? I miss you too. And I know you love me. I have known that since we were kids. You tell me you love me every day when you save me the piece of bread you know I like and when you ask me about the plants in the garden. When you told me I was your other half…  
But you’re right. I can’t remember ever saying it to you, either. When I get back I’m going to start saying “I love you,” more often. You _

Johnny reads the words until he can say them from memory. 

He leaves the letter on the desks and goes to their room. Jaehyun is there, but not really. 

It’s like Johnny sees for the first time the truth of the situation. That first day Jaehyun looked untouched by death.

Now. Now he’s barely human at all. 

Johnny feels breath caught in his throat, he goes back into the hall and falls to his hands and knees. He retches and chokes on the memory, the smell caught in his nostrils. He puts his forehead to the ground.  
He thinks about the gods he used to pray to. He wonders if they’re mocking him. If this is what he gets for abandoning their temples, for letting the flowers die, for tempting fate. 

He wonders who is really getting revenge?

It’s a long fall from there. He stays on the floor until night is firmly settled. He needs to do something. Needs to make plans, needs to say prayers, needs to get up and stop thinking about his lover’s body on the other side of the door.

A funeral, he decides, is the easiest thing to tackle. At least the ceremony and a resting place for Jaehyun’s ashes. He can think temples later, monuments later. First he needs to undo his wrongs. He needs to let Jaehyun rest. 

He goes back to his study, to get papers.

He doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep, not when he thinks about how he’s laid beside Jaehyun every night for a week. His skin crawls. He apologizes out loud. 

“Who are you talking to?” 

Johnny looks up from his notes and Minho is coming into the room.

His presence is familiar, even though Johnny knows he’s been keeping distance since Kun came to the courtyard. Johnny smiles at him, tired and fake but not uncomfortable. 

“Just thinking out loud.” 

Minho closes the door behind himself and moves to sit across from Johnny. He has a steaming mug in his hands and he slides it towards Johnny. “I heard you earlier. I know it’s pointless to ask but, are you okay?” 

Johnny takes the mug and holds it between his hands. He takes a breath of it, the smell is floral and warm. His eyes are so heavy.

“I don’t think I ever will be again. But it’s okay. I know what I need to do. I’m going to bury him.” 

“And then?” 

“I don’t know. I always felt like my life started and stopped with him. I don’t know what next.” Johnny feels small admitting that. His father would never.

Minho gets a look on his face that is hard to read. Johnny sips the tea, it doesn’t taste like much. He gets a flower petal between his teeth and pulls it from his mouth to look. 

“Funny,” he says when he sees the purple color. “Mom used to say these were dangerous.”

Minho hums. He reaches over to take the paper Johnny was working on, a rough sketch of a tomb, nothing extravagant yet. Johnny doesn’t move to stop him. He sinks back in his chair, drinks the tea, frowns. 

“He always said he didn’t want to lose me.”

“And he didn’t, did he?” Minho looks up. He looks so sad. 

“I guess not.” 

Johnny looks down at his hands. His vision is going a little blurry, he thinks it’s because he hasn’t slept. He thinks it’s the past few days catching up to him, the heartbreak, the trauma.

These hands used to hold Jaehyun. These hands took so many lives. 

He looks at his palm, the scar, the first thing Jaehyun ever gave him. 

It’s blurry. 

He can’t tell if he’s crying. 

“I want to be buried with him.” Johnny says, heart pounding at the thought.

He can only think they’ll be together again at least in one way. 

“I’ll try my best.” Minho says. His voice cracks. Johnny blinks up at him, slowly. 

“Why are you so sad?” He hears his own voice slurring. 

“Because I loved you both so much. And I couldn’t protect you.”

“Who can protect us from fate? That’s what Jaehyun would say. We’re just two people... we can’t undo... it.” Johnny leans back, closes his eyes. His head feels heavy. He’s getting hot. He can’t form the complaint in his mouth. 

“No one can.” Minho sounds so far away.

But he’s not. He’s close, close enough to take Johnny’s hand in his own. Close enough to kiss his temple and push the sweaty hair from his brow. 

“They’ll think it was a broken heart, Johnny. I couldn’t think of a different way. I couldn’t let it be anything else. You and your father, you spent your whole lives fighting. You deserved to go out gently.” 

Johnny doesn’t think he hears the words. Minho’s voice slowly becomes Jaehyun’s and Johnny isn’t sure, but he thinks he’s smiling. 

“I love you.” Jaehyun says, getting closer.

“I love you, too.” Johnny says, reaching for him. Jaehyun is beautiful again. They’re in the field, just the two of them and the sunshine. 

“You said you’d come back in one piece.” Johnny scolds. 

“I am back, aren’t I?”

The sunlight gets brighter and the two of them shut their eyes to bask in the warmth.

—   
“I don’t think the garden is going to grow back.” Taeil sighs, sitting on a bench near wilting hydrangeas. 

Donghyuck sits next to him. The rest of the group just gathers around, ragtag and weary. The service for Johnny was beautiful, but of course it was.

Taeil took nearly every flower to decorate. 

They didn’t want to remember Johnny the way he had been after Jaehyun died. They told stories about him as king, him as their friend, him as a child. 

It was a shock to hear he’d passed away, but it almost felt like relief.  
He suffered every day since he lost Jaehyun and none of them could avoid that fact. 

Johnny went into his family’s tomb. 

They tried to place Jaehyun with him but Johnny’s mother refused. She said Jaehyun was never a royal. (More shockingly, she said it was all his fault).

Taemin had shown up just in time, a calming presence to soothe the fire. He said he would take Jaehyun’s ashes with him, back to the mountains since there was no family left to mourn Jaehyun. No one left to bury him.

The transition period between Johnny’s funeral and another coronation is not drawn out. Minho sits on the throne within a week, and the country is invited to watch. No one feels shortchanged by this. The country needed to see a strong leader. They need to believe that they could rebuild after so many losses.

No one sees Jaehyun in their dreams anymore. They never see Johnny either, at least nothing that actually /feels/ like Johnny. Not the way it had been with Jaehyun. 

The loss is present when they walk the gardens or the training fields, or sit with Minho in the throne room.

Present but necessary. It’s like all the pain was lifted. 

Mark forgives himself. Taeyong does too. Minho pardons Kun and they bury Lucas. 

Everything heals except for the garden. Taeil plants a new one. He doesn’t mind. 

Taemin leaves when everything is calm.

He takes two urns with him. 

—  
Maybe a year later Johnny’s mother comes and Taemin isn’t the least bit surprised. There is tea waiting for her and the door is unlocked. 

She isn’t angry. 

“You took him with you.” She says when she sits. 

“It’s what he wanted.”

She doesn’t argue. She asks to see him and she sits with Taemin under the shade of a massive tree, where it feels warm but not too warm, even though the wind is howling just beyond its shade. 

“I feel like I spent so long trying to protect him, I never met him.”

Taemin smiles like he was waiting to hear that. “He was something special. They both were.” 

“Tell me about them?” 

They talk until Taemin can’t think of another story. She finds peace there too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you made it this far i love you i love you i love you. 
> 
> Thank you if you've been reading this story since I started it waaaaaay back in October and thank you if you just read it today. these characters are the most important characters to me, i have so enjoyed being able to tell their story and make people fall in love with them and mourn for them with me. 
> 
> some other notes to add. i absolutely didn't think it would tear me apart as much as it did to... well.. kill my two favorite characters ever. i promise they are so happy together now though and they aren't going to suffer anymore. the silliest epilogue in the world is in the next chapter and a couple side notes from me. if you have any questions about the story (because I feel like I left a lot of stuff in the wind) you can ask in the comments or DM me on twt (@suhjpeg) or stay tuned bc honestly i love everyone in this story so much and can think of fifty different spin offs to write. 
> 
> Thank you so much to em and gigi who let me rant on and on and on for hours about this silly story and encouraged me and supported me through the whole thing. thank you to anyone who cared even for one second about this story. <3


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was Fate all along. She was just on their side.

Fate is used to being alone. 

She has watched this story play out alone many times before. 

She cries alone. 

But she is not always alone. 

“I’m sorry,” comes a familiar voice, equal parts welcome and unwelcome in her halls. 

“Don’t tell me you’re sorry about this again. You were the one who came to me and begged, again, for me to rework my tapestry.” 

Hades looks properly chastised. He lowers his head and comes closer to her, kneels at her feet the picture of an apology. 

“I am sorry. I know it pains you to listen when I ask.” 

“I won’t forgive you. This was supposed to be their happiest.” 

“But Ten--” 

“I know, I know. He made a sacrifice greater than either of them ever would. I know he made a deal, I know. I know. Isn’t that always what you say?” She snaps, standing from her loom and side stepping the god on the floor. 

She loves him, but she despises him. 

Gods were so selfish. They came to her hall, always asking her to spin fate in their favor, to change destinies, to ignore her plan and write something that better suited them. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t ever fair to her. 

“I won’t ask again.” He says, and she laughs in a dry, humorless sound.

“No, you won’t. Because if you ever want a favor from me again, you will leave them alone in the next life. You won’t answer a prayer to anyone within two degrees of separation from them.” 

He makes a wounded sound, stands and comes after her. “You’re asking too much of me.” 

Of course he would say that. He gave Johnny his pride, didn’t he? 

“Asking too much would be me coming to you, century after century, ruining your plans because of petty arguments, or wars, or someone making a sacrifice. Too much would be me telling you to not answer a single prayer the entirety of their next life.”   
“You know I can’t do that.” 

“No, I know you can do that and you choose not to.” She’s sorting through the fabrics on her wall, old patterns, frowning. “Is it something about them that makes you want to interfere? Is there a specific reason you don’t want them to be happy?” 

He’s silent behind her. 

“Are you jealous? I don’t love them the same way I love you.” She pulls out the oldest piece of fabric, one of her first, with loose threads and messy knots. The first time they were Youngho and Yoonoh, the first time she wasn’t able to get it right. 

“You think I should be jealous of two cursed souls?” 

“The only curse on them is you. You and your brothers and sisters.” 

She lays the fabric out then goes back to her wall, searches again. 

“You are too attached to them,” he says, fingering the corner of the old fabric. She scoffs and shoos his hand away. 

“You can’t see it the way I do. They are meant to be. No matter how many times one of you asks me to re-string something, no matter how many times they suffer, they will still end up together again.” 

She has an armful of fabric now, sets the pile down with a heavy thump. 

“Every single one of these… They found each other again. And every single one of these, one of you interferes.” She points an accusatory finger at Hades. 

“I am starting a new one and you are not going to ask me anything about them.” She gestures to her loom, where everything is new and full of opportunities. “They are going to be happy. Should you put a toe within a thousand miles of them, I will ban you from my halls forever.” 

He looks like he wants to argue. She raises a brow in challenge. He stays silent.

“Now apologize one more time and mean it. Then we can talk about something else.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so this is actually the end. There are a couple plot points I want to mention that I never really fleshed out in the story because I didn't want to drag it out and also the focus of the story was supposed to be johnjae and a lot of these things johnjae were never privy to. 
> 
> 1\. the flowers: those purple flowers show up three times. 1. when johnny tells jaehyun they are dangerous 2. on the king's bedside when he is dying. 3. in johnny's tea -- the flowers are wolfsbane and very toxic to humans (i think. I googled it).   
> 2\. Where is Minho from? Johnny's mother came from Rosvo, originally marrying his father in an effort to bring peace to the two countries. Minho is Johnny's uncle, also from Rosvo.   
> 3\. which brings us to... why did Minho kill Johnny? Long before Minho came to Vislia with his sister, he made a blood pact with Kun (who was slated to become king) that they would take back the country that once belonged to them (remember, Rosvo and Vislia were originally one country). They did this with guidance from Ten, who made a huge sacrifice to have the pact acknowledged by Hades himself. Minho didn't know Johnny at the time, he actually thought his sister would not be able to have children. Anyways, he couldn't go back on the oath -- which is why there are a couple times in the story when he tells Johnny to run away. He doesn't want to do it. But then Johnny loses himself and Minho knows what he has to do.   
> 4\. Fate literally tried to get Johnny out of there like multiple times. The deal was just that Minho would take the throne, Johnny didn't have to die. If Johnny had just stayed with Taemin in the mountains, run away before his coronation, if Jaehyun had stayed behind... There were a few outs for them, but just like with Achilles, Johnny's silly little pride won every time.   
> 5\. nothing else to add im just sorry i killed tencas too.  
> 6\. also please don't ask me what point in time this story took place. this was originally supposed to be modern day but 1. i wanted there to be swords and 2. i didn't want to write about guns or war. you can just decide what era this is, maybe it is modern and their countries are just secluded.   
> 7\. also i love yuta. he got very little screen time in this story but he was a very good friend to johnny.  
> 8\. i don't want to stop writing notes because once I post this the story is really over and it makes me a little sad.


End file.
